


Who We Are Today

by LivianLynx



Series: 🐍 [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Canon, Bert survives RtS, Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Enemies to Friends, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Recovery, Redemption, Trauma, slow pacing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivianLynx/pseuds/LivianLynx
Summary: The battle for Shiganshina was won and the Survey Corps secured custody of the Colossal Titan. Three books taught Paradis all they needed to know about the hatred the outside world harboured for their island, and no one believed that they’d overcome fearful adversity and achieve peace with Marley’s war machine by talking to the one enemy who could answer them but refused. No one but a single scout who’d believed in negotiation since the very beginning.Canon divergent rewrite of SnK where Bertholdt survives Shiganshina and Armin seeks his cooperation with Paradis in search of peace between their home nations.
Relationships: Armin Arlert & Bertolt Hoover, Armin Arlert & Hange Zoë
Series: 🐍 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046719
Comments: 32
Kudos: 81





	1. Snake Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Canon is frustrating and I wanted to know what the story would look like if both Bertholdt and Armin had survived in Shiganshina, so I wrote just that. Most fics about Bertholdt focus on his dynamic with Reiner, but there’s so little on his dynamic with Armin and in smaller quantities with Eren so I’m filling that niche now.
> 
> I’m not gonna follow canon that carefully with this one because I want character interaction to get the spotlight and have plot follow it. My city now, I just want a story where Bert is alive. So lots of these will be based on headcanons and some non-canon or possibly even out of character details and whatnot. I know I had to bend some characters a little bit out of shape to get where I wanted to get lmao
> 
> I don’t really know where I’m taking the plot yet and a lot of things will be improvised based on loose ideas, so the concept may change a lot, but I’m already setting up a lot of things from the start! Hopefully it’s as enjoyable a story to read as it is for me to write. Immensely self-indulgent and caters to my own fic needs. I ain’t no native English speaker, nor do I understand grammar, so expect it to be a little rough around the edges here and there.
> 
> Title’s from Anadel’s [In The Water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3nrNFVUgTg), the full line being “With who we are today could never make amends for what we’ve done,” but that was way too long for a title. Worth a listen! It’s a good warrior song.
> 
> **Content warning for canon-typical depictions of trauma, anxiety, mental health issues, gore and torture (sometimes vague, sometimes explicit), unreality, and suicidal ideation. I’ll add appropriate warnings before specific chapters that need them. Tags and rating are subject to change.**

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle for Shiganshina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> snake eyes  
> /ˈsneɪk ʌɪz/  
>  _noun_
> 
> 1\. a throw of two ones with a pair of dice.  
> 2\. the worst possible result; a complete lack of success.
> 
> ** **

_Armin… Is this how you will spend your final moments?_

The younger soldier had made his choice, anchored to the Colossal Titan and unrelenting against its boiling steam that assaulted him without mercy, and it baffled Bertholdt that he would just throw himself against his steam without a coherent goal in mind. Eren’s titan lay broken on the ground, the remaining survivors locked in battle with Reiner, but he still expected someone would be there to make his diversion work?

It was not only sad, but naive. 

Shiganshina had been laid to waste. A horrific carnage, were it not for the instantaneous death the Colossal Titan’s blastwave caused. Hundreds died in one go, extinguished before they could grasp they were going to die. Had he been more skilled, maybe the remaining members of the 104th he’d called valued comrades just a little earlier would be spared in the blast and he wouldn’t need to go for the more painful method of killing them. Even if he crushed them beneath his limbs, that was still far worse than evaporating within the blink of an eye. 

How unbearably, unreasonably cruel a world they lived in.

But it was better this way. It was better they wouldn’t have to mourn their fallen and it was better that only the Founder would go with them when all of this was over. None of them wanted to die, but Bertholdt had decided he would end their lives, so that’s what was going to happen, no going around it. When he first noticed there were survivors, he’d expected they would utilise the only weapon they really had against him: attrition. Even with their horses dead and the soldiers on the other side of the wall boxed in, they could still choose to sacrifice the many to secure the only defence Paradis still had against Marley. Without Eren, they were done for. So many lives could’ve and _should’ve_ gone to saving the Founder instead. So why not hide and wait until Bertholdt ran out of energy to sustain his titan form? Bertholdt knew for sure that Armin would’ve figured out that was his biggest weakness. What did Armin hope to achieve here by fighting him head-on?

Did he want to die?

Ah. That made sense. Was there anything more understandable than wanting to end it all in response to so much suffering? Bertholdt had seen it all around him as soon as a week after they first infiltrated the island and found the remains of someone who had given up already, and the knowledge that there was a way out that was inaccessible to him haunted him even to this day. Because he had a duty not only to his country and to the world, but also to the only two people he still had around him. The human mind wasn’t built to carry so much pain. The boy was allowed to die — the world wouldn’t end if he did, and after all of the remaining 104th joined him, there would be no one left who’d have to go through the process of mourning him. Tragic but painless. With the heavy casualties the Survey Corps suffered just minutes ago and their impending loss of the Coordinate and his best friend, Bertholdt could empathise with Armin’s wish to die before he could end up all alone. 

Bertholdt closed his eyes, because while he was prepared to grant him that wish, he still respected the soldier tremendously and he knew he was extinguishing one of the world’s brightest lights in the dark. But there was no way around it, he’d made his choice. It would be a painful and cruel death, exactly what he promised himself he wanted to prevent, but if Armin had thrown himself into his steam voluntarily, then he must’ve been okay with burning alive. Not many people chose their death. Not the moment, nor the method or the circumstances. His last comfort could very well be that he chose for this, no matter how gruesome a way of dying he had to face. 

He’d put him out of his misery.

For a very brief moment, he boiled even hotter to make it fast, the skin of his titan blazing so intensely that he felt it through the isolated nape that protected him. It wouldn’t kill him to experience something close to what his victim would die from, but the added heat stress made him aware of how the extended battle was starting to exhaust his body. He’d need to end this soon. Find the others and extinguish them before he wore himself out.

His eyes cracked open again, wanting to give Armin the consideration of being seen in his final moments. But when he looked down at the blond anchored to the Colossal Titan, he was surprised to see not defeat, but confidence written all over his face. Determined confidence, almost anger, barely visible as he shielded his face with his arms. 

Was that the face of someone who’d given up and surrendered himself to fate?

Was giving up and dying the way Armin did things?

Someone else, maybe, but Armin? The bright soul who always had some trick up his sleeve even when it looked like he was surrounded from all sides, the strategist whom Bertholdt had learned not to underestimate? For him to charge in mindlessly without any support as a selfish last resort instead of saving his mind for when anyone came to back him up? It suddenly didn’t make sense anymore. He could come up with better plans than this. Usually, plans that directly used his opponents to his advantage. That’s how he’d known the soldier since the day they’d met, so why change that so suddenly? Even his improvised plan to talk to Bertholdt earlier had more structure than this. Was he truly that miserable?

A vibrant memory shot through his mind, one where he was taunted into violent action that ended up costing them the Founder. No, not mindlessly taunted, _manipulated._ The blond was good at it, and he used it to his advantage to get Bertholdt to lash out and lower his guard so that the Commander had an opening to slash the bindings that fastened Eren to his back and buy Paradis more time.

Didn’t that feel uncomfortably familiar?

Conventionally, adrenaline facilitated the exudation of steam, but the shock that ran through his spine at the realisation made him stop the blast altogether. No longer trapped in the current of scalding air, Armin’s limp body fell down until it hung in the air, unconscious but his anchors still attached to the Colossal Titan’s skull, preventing him from falling to his death. It would be so easy to crush him under bony fingers, but an unconscious target was nowhere near his top priority right now. Bertholdt couldn’t afford to pay attention to someone who was already too badly burnt to survive his wounds. Not when danger lurked around the corner. 

He sharpened his senses, vigilant to any movement or sound that meant someone was approaching him. Steam still dispersed around him, and he could barely see anything. He shot short bursts of steam as a preventive measure in case someone approached from the ground to take out the Colossal Titan’s ankles. He regretted being too slow to crush Armin earlier. Had he been faster, he wouldn't have had to put himself at a disadvantage from being blinded by the smokescreen, forcing him to be this careful. It was unlikely he’d ever fight a battle like this again, but it was something to take note of for the future regardless.

Right now, he had to put his everything into ensuring that there would be a future for him.

Listening attentively, he heard how both sides of the wall were turbulent. He'd heard a lot of screaming from the outside of the Wall as he was near it, before everything went silent signalling Zeke's victory. Behind him, he’d heard several explosions, and he couldn’t help but feel worried about Reiner’s safety, but he had himself to worry about first so he ignored them. Zeke might show up to offer support any moment now, and it was direly needed to weed out anyone who might try to flank the Colossal Titan. And if Zeke had won, that meant Bertholdt could focus elsewhere. So long as he kept up these short bursts of steam, no one could realistically get close to him.

The Colossal Titan’s head turned to help Bertholdt survey the battle behind him, but he was interrupted by a low rumbling noise, and he prepared for another burst of steam to kill his ambusher. 

“Bertholdt! We’re leaving.”

Zeke’s human voice? He looked back at the wall and saw Pieck’s titan climbing onto the top of the wall. Zeke sat on her supply backpack, covered in blood with his limbs severed unevenly, his eye socket horribly mangled and steaming intensely as it healed. Did the scouts on the other side of the wall find a way to slip past the line of titans and get him? 

With their warchief down, the tide suddenly turned and the battle looked lost. But they didn’t need to eradicate every single scout that was left, they just needed to obtain Eren. 

Bertholdt emerged from the nape of his titan, coughing as he breathed in the smouldering air still wafting off of its skin. He didn’t pull himself loose from the tendrils connecting to his head and limbs yet, so when Pieck jumped onto the Colossal’s shoulder and opened her mouth to bite him out, he yelled at her to stop. She listened, but Zeke looked impatient. Before he could bark at him, Bertholdt explained himself.

“Warchief! The Coordinate is down below in front of the gate, unconscious in his titan. We can still grab him and win!”

“Then stop wasting time,” Zeke snarled at him. “I won’t hesitate to leave you behind if you hold us back.” He’d rarely seen their warchief this panicked.

Bertholdt hesitated. If he disconnected from the Colossal Titan, it would disintegrate and with the explosion and his constant flow of steam earlier, he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to form another one. With Reiner’s status unknown, if Bertholdt was the last titan standing, he couldn’t just give up their only remaining weapon and risk becoming defenceless. Pieck had to carry four people, she couldn’t be expected to be able to carry everyone and fend off the scouts at the same time, even with Bertholdt there to defend her. 

Worst case, she’d have to cling onto the Colossal Titan until it reached the wall again and expose everyone to sporadic bursts of steam to fend off attackers. They’d all burn, but with all of them being shifters, it wouldn’t be permanent, only incredibly painful in the moment.

Just then, a loud series of explosions boomed in the city. The three looked down, and to Bertholdt’s horror, down below and barely visible through the steam that still hung around him in a thick curtain, were the evaporating remains of the Armoured Titan. His blood ran cold. 

“What is happening down there?” Zeke asked.

Bertholdt jerked his head towards Zeke again, worry now visibly written over his face. “Warchief, they have defeated Reiner!”

“Dammit!” Zeke shouted. “Bertholdt, go retrieve the Coordinate, we’ll come get you down below. You either leave your titan or you die here and cost us the mission. Don’t be stubborn, you’re dead if you stay here,” he commanded, and before Bertholdt could give an answer, Pieck’s titan jumped off of the Colossal’s shoulder and into the city to go straight for Reiner. 

There was no going around it anymore. He had to leave his titan if he wanted a mission success. After seeing Reiner’s titan defeated for a second time, an urgency overtook Bertholdt that caused him to pull loose from his titan’s tendrils and leave its nape without thinking. Immediately, the Colossal Titan sank through its knees and Bertholdt anchored himself to its shoulders on one side, ready to jump off once he was low enough to make his way down to the immobile Attack Titan. 

The Colossal Titan came to a halt as it lay slumped over, now evaporating, and before its heat could burn through the soles of Bertholdt’s shoes, he hopped off, ready to anchor himself to a lower point of the wall to stop near his target and cut Eren out of his titan. He let gravity do its work until the last possible moment, because every second he gained was an increase in their chances of victory. 

He fell past Armin’s 3DMG lines, still attached to the Colossal’s skull, and he couldn’t help but hope that the boy succumbed to his wounds swiftly rather than slowly. In the end, it didn’t matter. He was dead no matter how it went down, but if he could avoid the pain of such a slow death after his plan had failed, Bertholdt preferred that.

Glancing as he fell past where Armin’s body connected to his wires, he saw that there was… Nothing.

An anchor shot into the wall and Bertholdt came to a halt against it, painfully so as he didn’t ease into his fall and he stopped abruptly. He turned his head up looking for Armin, but the boy was gone, the only thing still attached to his anchor lines were the small pieces of leather they had been connected to, clearly cut loose in a hurry. If someone had cut him loose, then…

Bertholdt looked down, disconnecting his anchor again to make his way to the ground, but before he made it, the issue was already visible through the clouds of steam. Eren’s titan form, partially crystallised, the rest of it evaporating beneath him, and no sign of the Coordinate’s human form anywhere in sight. He landed in front of it hard, almost sinking through his knees, and took a moment to survey the situation. He must’ve left his titan and cut Armin loose when Bertholdt was talking to Zeke, too distracted concocting a plan to notice what was happening below. Was that Armin’s plan? To die distracting Bertholdt and make him think Eren was knocked out cold until he could sneak up on him? Did he really think it would be that easy? 

If Eren was gone already, there was no way that Bertholdt could find him again in this maze of a city, but did he really have a choice? Everything rode on him right now. He could make his way towards Pieck and hitch a ride home, but without the Coordinate, him and Reiner were both dead and the world possibly doomed. After such carnage, there was no way that Eren wouldn’t unleash the rumbling upon them the moment he learned how. He’d want bloody revenge on Marley. 

Bertholdt couldn’t afford not to go looking for Eren, no matter where he might be hidden or how deadly the choice was. 

He shot his anchors into the buildings to his right, almost instinctively. Would he really hide? Eren was an impulsive hothead, but if the life of his friend depended on him, he might just be able to think straight and do what he needed to save him. In this case, that was to take him to a body of water to cool down his steaming body and bring him back from the brink of death. The river was where he might find the two. It was all so pointless, Armin had been burned too badly to save him, but Bertholdt could empathise that Eren wanted to hold onto the hope that he could still be resuscitated. Hadn’t Bertholdt just given up a surefire victory to rescue Reiner despite seeing half of his skull had been blown off and he could very well be dead already? Anything for his comrades. Bertholdt could respect that he still valued love despite living in this cold world that had mercy on no one.

Zipping towards the river, it didn’t take him long to spot Eren. Even from a distance, he saw his form crouching by the water. The wall between the street and the river had been shattered in several areas, no doubt the result of either Bertholdt’s first or his second assault on the city, and Eren had slipped through one of the openings to submerge Armin’s body in the water from the abdomen down, splashing water onto the higher regions of his body to cool him down. 

He wasn’t even hiding. 

It would be easy to grab him, but Bertholdt knew that Eren wouldn’t just leave Armin behind without putting up one hell of a fight. The last thing Bertholdt wanted to do was waste his energy fighting Eren, but after having carried out several transformations already, he had to be just as tired as Bertholdt was. So long as no one else entered the fight, it would be over before it even started.

He just had to be quick about it. Dismember him before he could react, after which there was nothing he could do. It was underhanded and unfair, but no one in the world would care if dirty tactics were used to incapacitate the Founder if it meant securing victory.

Blades drawn, Bertholdt landed by the last building before the stretch of road that separated the houses from the river. He dashed forward, light on his feet, hoping to catch Eren off-guard, but his lines had been too noisy for him not to notice. Before Bertholdt could get into combat range, Eren used his free hand to draw a blade and twisted his torso, weapon drawn defensively in front of him. His face had been initially tear-streaked and frightened, but once he noticed it was Bertholdt who approached him, hot anger burned across his visage, eyes ablaze with a desire for vengeance Bertholdt had seen once before, high up in treetops. He dragged Armin’s body out of the water, holding him close, as if Bertholdt would lunge at him and kill him if he didn’t. The boy was still breathing, to Bertholdt’s surprise, but judging by the severe boils along his arms and the blood that stained his clothes, that wouldn’t last for much longer. 

But Eren didn’t necessarily know that. Maybe that could be his bargaining chip.

“You piece of shit, I will gut you in the most excruciating way possible!” Eren spat out at the top of his lungs, not a drop of self-control contained within his words as he tightened his grip on Armin’s shoulder. This was an opponent whose anger would allow him to make many mistakes. A good advantage to have.

“Eren. Come with me and your friends will survive. We only need you,” Bertholdt bargained, keeping his voice as neutral and reasonable as he could through his elevated breathing. He looked down at the blond in his grip. “The rest will find Armin and take care of him. They’re still alive. He’ll live. But I’ll need to kill him if you don’t cooperate.” He knew for a fact that Eren wouldn’t agree to give up and die. The very least he could do was try, futile as it was.

His expression grew even more enraged before he shifted to a cold smirk, eyes wide. “How about I kill you and we both survive instead? That’s more likely, you lying bastard, you said you wanted us all dead!”

There was no time for this. Cold ruthlessness was all that was left after negotiation failed. The way Armin was pressed so close to Eren, the shifter couldn’t fight back against Bertholdt without tossing him into the water and risking letting his friend drown, so the only way to dismember Eren would be to cut through Armin as well. Bertholdt hoped that the boy was as unconscious as he seemed and wouldn’t have to feel what he was about to do as he drew back a blade and prepared to charge in. 

Right then, Eren moved his blade towards his own body. In one swift motion, he placed it against his throat, his glare now icy compared to that passion that burned within his eyes seconds ago. 

“You need me alive.” He said in a low voice, pressing down on the blade a little until he drew blood to prove his point. “It’ll all be for nothing if you don’t get me alive.”

Bertholdt froze in his motion entirely. Would Eren really kill himself to prevent the enemy from obtaining him? He would shoot Paradis in the leg by doing so, and the shifter was widely known for his fiery spirit that couldn’t be tamed by anyone or anything. By his will to fight, no matter what. By bloody vengeance upon his enemies. By the sheer power of his indelible resolve. 

This was a bluff. He would never take his own life to save his people.

But then, Bertholdt thought about what had happened earlier. How prepared Armin had been to jump into his sights to distract him, fully aware that he would die regardless of if he were successful in his efforts. He couldn’t predict Armin’s suicide plan was for real either. He’d underestimated his opponent’s willingness to throw away their own survival to save others once, he couldn’t risk it again. They needed Eren alive. 

Bertholdt was running out of time, and his hesitation wasn’t helping. Where were Zeke and Pieck? Did they get intercepted trying to save Reiner? Bertholdt hadn’t heard any explosions, but the scouts could take Pieck if they had enough gas. Without her, there was no escaping the scouts and getting back to the harbour. He had to believe she was still out there.

The mission was falling apart fast and Bertholdt would have to choose. Unfortunately for his opponents, he’d just learned how to make important choices instead of leaving them to others. He’d be faster than Eren and he’d dismember his sword arm before he could slice his throat. Just as his leg muscles tightened to put his everything into charging forward and he lunged at Eren, a blast sounded behind him, and Bertholdt just managed to direct his movement sideways far enough to feel the anchor of a 3DMG line zip past his face, slicing deep into the thinly covered skinless etchings of his cheek. 

His time was up.

Without a second thought, he followed his motion and dashed alongside the river wall until he was in range of a building, anchoring himself to it and shooting away as he looked behind him one last time. Body covered in steaming blood and much resembling the old illustrations of island devils Marley put out as propaganda, the Captain sprinted towards Eren’s location. Eren had finally put Armin aside and looked ready to chase after Bertholdt, hand ready in his mouth, but the Captain stopped him. Bertholdt direly hoped that neither of them would chase him down, but if he hadn’t heard the zipping of 3DMG lines when he was approached, that must’ve meant that he’d run out of gas and he was taking Eren’s supply. Bertholdt was good, but not better than humanity’s strongest, and he would definitely die if the veteran caught up to him.

Pieck. He needed Pieck. He needed to find the Cart Titan and anchor himself to it so that they could escape together. She was the only one that could save them all right now.

With one final push from his gear, Bertholdt reached the top of a building, and far away in the city, he could see the Cart Titan making its way towards him. Reiner hung out of its mouth, damaged but safe. So he’d made it, they all had. They were coming to his aid, and Bertholdt could almost laugh in relief at the sight. He was out of breath and he had just enough gas left to cross the city, but he’d make it. Even if he could accept his loss, in front of him was the only thing that could still get the Colossal Titan back to Marley. To die here would be a detriment to his country. He had to put his everything into reaching her before the scouts could.

So he ran. Under already heavy breathing and strenuous fatigue running through his body, he pushed himself to the limit to reach her. Jumping off the end of the roof, he switched to 3DMG to soar between the buildings, and the gap was closing. Just a few more hundred meters and he’d make it.

Then, Pieck stopped dead in her tracks and Bertholdt’s heart skipped a beat. She stood there for a second before turning around and galloping off towards the outside wall over the rooftops. She was faster than him, at this rate he wouldn’t make it towards her. And when he heard the zipping of lines behind him, he understood exactly why she’d turned heel. Levi was right behind him.

Bertholdt became careless with his gas usage, anything to get himself to burst forward faster, but with humanity’s strongest on his heels and Pieck leaving, he couldn’t see any way in which he’d be faster than him. Not to mention that if he didn’t have enough gas left to scale the wall, none of this made a difference. He’d be stuck down in the city and there was no way he could ever win against an opponent this skilled. He was running on those bursts of adrenaline flaring up his every muscle into action, because he had to make it somehow.

Pieck reached the wall and started climbing. Half the city’s distance left between them, and in one quick backwards glance, Bertholdt noted he had a few seconds on Levi. Enough to make it if he applied himself fully to getting there. When Pieck finally climbed to the top, she took a moment to look backwards, but all his hope was shattered when she turned around and leapt off the wall. 

Nothing short of cold and harsh. For a moment, it was like his heart stopped in his chest and the world slowed down around him as the image of Pieck leaving him was permanently burned into his memories. He’d be lying if he said that didn’t kill him on the inside.

He kept going, still making his way towards the wall, but as he swung through the air in what more and more became a panicked rush, what was the point now that he’d been left to his devices by the ones who were supposed to back him up but left him to be maimed or captured by the enemy instead? What’d happen when he made it to the wall? How would he continue afterwards, with his legs almost drained of blood from 3DMG usage and no energy left to run?

He hated the thought, but there was something inside him that told him to just let go and let himself be slashed to pieces. Wouldn’t it be much easier to give up right now? He’d already decided he was ready to accept any outcome, and after seeing his comrades abandon him at the top of that wall, he wasn’t so sure if he still had the drive to try to reach them again. It wasn’t personal, of course. He’d have done the same if it was the only way. Gambling three to save the life of one was insane. But it felt so bitter.

And he almost gave up. Almost. Were it not for the thought that he didn’t know what was happening on the other side of that wall. No one else had scaled it together with Pieck, and for all he knew, the brilliant strategist had devised one last plan to await him on the other side and let him leap down onto her back to escape together. If he gave up now, everything up until now was for nothing. There was no knowing if there was another plan. He had to hope that there was. He had to.

So he accepted it. His fate was in the hands of Pieck and Zeke now. All he had to do was make sure he made it to the top of that wall. 

He reached the wall and, without looking back to see how much distance there was between the two of them, started scaling it, relieved that he still had enough gas left to go up, but he could run out any second now. He needed a backup plan. Because if no one was there for him on the other side, he had a crisis on his hands. It would’ve all been for nothing. Pointless, just like the world was, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t anxious to know if he’d live or die. Then, in a moment of clarity, he saw his options before him crystal clear, and he didn’t need any more confirmation to know that this would be his terminal plan of action.

With one last burst of gas, he reached the top of the wall. There was no hesitation. Immediately, he sprinted across the surface, and behind him, he heard a furious “No!” from his pursuer, dangerously close. In his complete exhaustion, Bertholdt wouldn’t get much farther than the other side of the wall before his legs gave out entirely, but he didn’t need to. No time to think. Even half a second of hesitation and he was caught up with. But his plan didn’t require him to think, just to do. 

He crossed the length of the wall, swerving to dodge any anchors that may be launched at him, and with the handles of his 3DMG held tightly in his shivering hands, he took one final deep breath as he ran. At full speed, he closed his eyes and with every last bit of his strength pushed into the tip of his foot against the edge, threw himself over the other side of the wall - a blind leap of faith into his ultimate fate. Diving head-first, he felt every fibre of his body, every vein pulse inside him as the wind rushed over his clothes and through his hair, strangely at peace to know his fate would be decided as he soared through the air surrendered to completely helpless freefall, and when he finally opened his eyes, time stood still for a moment. 

Beneath him a small impact crater and far away in the distance, the figure of the Cart Titan dashing away at full speed. 

Leaving him behind.

It raked his insides, constricting his lungs and punching out all air. Not what he’d hoped for, nor what he bet his luck on, and it struck him over the head how he needed to enable his backup plan _now_ or he was done for, no time to think of how badly that image in front of him stung. Time instantly resumed and he knew he had less than a second to react, so he threw both his 3DMG handles behind him, because for neither of his options would they be of any more use to him. 

He jammed his hand between his teeth, biting down harder than he ever had in his life, a silent prayer firing through his mind that it would work. He would either transform and signal the others that he was still alive, still not beaten, still had some juice left inside him to keep fighting and make pursuit of his comrades, or he would fail and within no more than a couple of seconds, take all of Marley’s secrets as well as control over the Colossal Titan to his grave. No matter how he looked at this, he won, and he felt a solemn sense of pride that he came up with such a win-win plan when he scaled the wall. He would never surrender and they wouldn’t get him alive to tear all the answers out of him, nor would he let any of them deal the decisive blow. He’d made sure of that in his final offensive blow against the island. Finally, after a life of being swept along in the currents of fate, he was in full control of his destiny.

Either he’d just drawn his last breath, or he was going home. He chose so.

It was hard to tell with the tension of adrenaline reaching into every corner of his body, but with his goal irrevocably set on exploding and blowing away the area, a crackle emerged from his hand, reaching all the way into his heart and running through his spine towards his extremities, tingling inside the tips of his fingers and toes. Electricity exploded all around him and he felt the familiar wave of pre-transformation heat envelop his body entirely in the flash second before he incarnated the form of the Colossal Titan, and it made him feel beyond ecstatic both inside and outside as his skin jolted under his impending transformation. He won. He’d live, he’d make it home, he’d get to see—

Pain stabbed through his chest, piercing him so deeply that the shockwave reverberated through his whole body and shattered his ribs and collarbones. All that electricity decayed into deep nausea, and a crushing pressure spread through his torso as a bloodied metal spike shot straight out of his neck accompanied by the taste of iron, and for once, Bertholdt wasn’t sure if his heart was still beating in his chest upon feeling the entry point of the anchor was in the middle of his back and it could’ve very well pierced straight through. 

He needed his blades. Now. No matter what shape he was in, he needed to fight back, but when he felt a sickeningly sudden jerk as the ground abruptly stopped nearing and his 3DMG handles rushed straight past him, he realised he’d lost all momentum caught onto the anchor. Only for a moment, because as soon as he stopped, the anchor ripped out of his throat again, its barbs wreaking havoc on his insides on its way out, and by the time he realised that he was falling again, all he could feel was the absence of huge chunks of flesh that had been torn out of his torso, so raw and rough that it seared through his entire body, paralysing him from doing anything not because he didn’t want to but because he was too broken to move anything. 

This was no longer his own choice. He was so close, not even a second away from tasting victory, and it was ripped out of his hands like that because he was just too slow. He hadn’t chosen to go out, he’d been killed, and the cruellest part was that in this final second before he plummeted to his death, he was aware of how futile his struggle against his fate was. No agency or choice, nothing he could do, not even his death would be his own decision. 

Would the fall still kill him so close to the ground? 

Would all this damage be enough to end it?

Would it hurt?

He didn’t know. Because in those very last moments, where his instincts took over and he balanced his head away from the ground as he fell, the world around him faded to black and he was spared hearing the sound of his body breaking against the ground beneath him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve got a brief intro and a setup down. Next chapter’s gonna be a little ways away from this one, both in distance and timeframe. It’s gonna be one of the more difficult to write chapters, so it may take some time before I update again.
> 
> I sometimes talk about this fic on my twitter so follow me there if you want - [AruBerus](https://twitter.com/AruBerus), usually referred to as just 🐍. I'm also probably gonna draw some stuff for each chapter, you can find the first one [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/post/635230695886897152/i-think-ill-do-illustrations-for-all-of-my-fics) and all of them [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/tagged/Who-We-Are-Today-artwork/chrono), though there'll definitely be spoilers in that last link once I have a few more chapters up.
> 
> Big thanks to [Gwenyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenyn_bright) and [T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intonerthree) for beta reading! The grammar’s a lot more bearable thanks to them.


	2. Bedrock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long aftermath of the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written during NaNoWriMo.
> 
> ** **

Something shook him awake — so firmly that he almost rolled onto his side and slammed face-first into the wooden paneling beside him. He found himself briefly disoriented under the hot breath evaporating against a clear morning sky above him, only to remember why he wasn’t waking up in a warm bed but on the chilly wooden floor of a horse-drawn cart cloaked in a thin layer of snow. He had dozed off not long after they embarked on their journey, lulled by the warm embrace of a wool blanket and still too shaken from his injuries to power through the night. It wasn’t a good idea to fall asleep on a moving cart with the recent nocturnal temperatures, even with the protection of a thick blanket draped over his shoulder to shield him from the chilly gusts of wind that dominated the plains they travelled through, but he had to catch up on sleep if he wanted to counteract the sleepless nights of recent. 

It had been a long journey, taking them all the way out to the open countryside in the northwestern regions of Wall Rose over the span of a night. His shivering limbs and clammy hands made him reconsider if he’d made the right choice when he decided to rest, but he was still too injured to stay awake the entire night without some serious repercussions. Conventionally, he’d need to sleep for over half a day if he wanted to avoid walking around with a severe case of lethargy for the rest of the week. Rest would do much more to help him heal, even in this cold. He’d need every last bit of energy he could get for what would happen underground. 

He shrugged off his blanket and found his coat unpleasantly damp beneath it. Dull pain shot through his back and abdomen as he sat up. Not unexpected in his current condition. Despite the knowledge that he would push his boundaries today, he was confident enough that he could stand on his two feet and walk the distance he needed to. So, when he was offered a hand by one of his Military Police escorts, he refused it and crawled off of the cart on his own after grabbing his belongings, landing on unsteady legs and sinking through his knees, struggling for a moment as he held onto the edge of the cart before finding stable footing. 

They’d arrived at a settlement he’d never been to before: a small nine-house town that shared the name Tourze with its adjacent mine. Once bustling with life and operational to house miners, in the past years it had fallen into decay after being abandoned. The town had become more active again only very recently, not for the mines themselves but for a new, much more imperative function: detaining the Colossal Titan after his capture in the battle to retake Wall Maria. 

Today, Armin was here to do what none had been able to do so far: to make Bertholdt talk.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t that he kept his mouth tightly shut, but that everything he said was useless. Hange had been in charge of the interrogation, and while they were annoyingly vague about the details of how they persuaded him to talk and the results opened to the Survey Corps’ elite were bare-bones, they emphasised how often Bertholdt chose to lie despite knowing full well that the entire island now knew about Marley’s existence courtesy of the three detailed journals Grisha Yeager left behind in the basement of his family home in Shiganshina. To lie knowing his answers could very well be verified by a written account, he must’ve intended to keep all information to himself. Without the books as reference, it was impossible to tell whether or not he was lying. Any information he gave that wasn’t written in the books was essentially useless until the Survey Corps could verify these things for themselves, at which point it would already be too late. The interrogation efforts were put to a halt because of funding issues and Bertholdt was kept imprisoned deep underground until they could find a new dose of serum and a suitable candidate to inherit the Colossal Titan from him. It seemed unlikely so long as they hadn’t discovered what the serum was and how they could obtain it.

Armin would’ve come over to Tourze to help with the investigation sooner, but during the Battle for Shiganshina and his last stand against Bertholdt, he sustained burns across his arms, face, torso, and much of the rest of his body, so severe that by the time his mind was unfogged again after a delirious battle against his infections, they’d already given up trying to get information out of Bertholdt. After that, he had a recovery process to focus on. There hadn’t been time, it wasn’t safe, but most of all… Everyone advised against him coming here when he expressed the desire to do so. Eren, Jean, his other friends, Hange — even his physicians. For a long time, he himself was strongly against the idea of ever facing the shifter again. The scars were too fresh.

The past four months had been hell. Armin counted himself lucky that he barely remembered anything of the first week, but what he did remember was enough to nauseate him, set his hair on edge. With most of the skin cooked off of his hands by the Colossal Titan’s steam and the rest of his body in such bad shape, in addition to proper medical attention being postponed for so many hours after he got injured, his physicians were constantly cycling between fighting off shock, dehydration, fever, and infections. All they had been able to do to facilitate his recovery was make sure he didn’t suffer from any complications as his skin slowly restored itself. He was as good as comatose during the first few days.

Once Armin woke up, he felt everything. His constitution was too weak to anaesthetise him without the risk of stopping his heart. The analgesic drugs they injected into his veins barely took the edge off and made him even more disoriented than he already was. Worst were those feverish nights he spent screaming and convulsing, hands and feet restrained to stop him from scratching open his wounds in response to the agonising itch that ran deep under his skin. Eren and Mikasa were by his side day and night to comfort him, but they were ultimately powerless to change anything. He wished they’d just inject that anaesthetic, because if he had to flip a coin between being relieved from this torture for a few hours and dying, he couldn’t find any downsides. 

Most of his month-long battle against infections, he spent delirious. Time where the pain was manageable enough to focus his mind on other things, was spent on exercising his hands and limbs to avoid his skin stiffening too badly in the hopes that he’d get to keep most of their function after recovery. Eventually, his body conquered its infections and his global inflammation went down. The pain reduced to a level he could persevere through by showing his bravest face, but he still had to deal with the changing of his wound dressing — a sensation almost worse than the initial burn — several times a day. 

The weeks that followed, he slowly walked away from the brink of death and started making actual progress. He’d lost a lot of weight, both fat and muscle, during his first few weeks despite eating way more than he was used to. He lacked the energy to even exercise his limbs, often feverishly hot and sleepy during the few hours he spent awake. After his injuries healed enough to let him wear clothes besides underwear again, he flat-out refused for many weeks, worried that the pressure would cause more pain or a relapse of his infections. Much of his rationale had decayed into fear and he felt so useless for it.

No one had to know that behind that brave fighter who held on was someone who contemplated giving up on a daily basis, and he didn’t have the spirit to tell anyone how rough it was. They were worried enough already, he didn’t have to burden them with such knowledge. Maybe he was considered a hero for sacrificing himself in the Battle for Shiganshina and being prepared to give up his life to aid in the defeat of the Colossal Titan. If he were honest, there were too many times where he wished that he hadn’t survived instead.

He’d rather forget these thoughts ever permeated his mind altogether.

When he learned that they had taken Bertholdt to an underground mine never to see the light of day again, Armin was beyond relieved that he’d never again have to look upon the face of the man who condemned him to this horrible fate. When he learned they had tortured him, he felt a guilty sense of satisfaction to know that he hadn’t been the only one to suffer. When he learned they ran out of resources after about a week and made the decision to let him rot alone in the darkness until they could take the last thing he had to offer to Paradis from him, he couldn’t find it in himself to care much. It was tragic, knowing his history based on what was written in those books, but he was so far beyond the stage where he still had the energy to worry much about someone who caused him this much pain.

Amidst that whole barrage of information, Armin couldn’t help but quietly wonder over and over how things would be different had Bertholdt, or even Reiner or Annie, chosen to talk. Not that there was an option back in Shiganshina, because Bertholdt wouldn’t listen and the scouts couldn’t trust him even if he surrendered to negotiation due to their overwhelming lack of information and strength against so many enemy shifters, but he’d lie awake for nights thinking about how much progress they lost because they didn’t have a chance to sit down in peace, exchange information to learn more about each other. 

That’s where it started. The thought became louder and louder as Armin’s pain lessened, and he became curious to know. Because for the first time since Marley attacked the island, they had a shifter safely in their custody, alive and powerless to fight back and conscious, yet the first thing they did to him was try to beat answers out of him instead of talking. Yes, they were limited by time, but wasn’t that a huge waste of time, resources, and opportunity? 

Armin had to know if it was possible. By now, the shifter may have turned against them entirely in response to his brutal treatment, and there was no way to know the person Bertholdt really was. The chances that he had come all the way here for nothing were astronomically high, but he was still out of commission to fight and had to limit his exercise, so what else was he going to do with his free time? He’d either learn there was no reasoning with Bertholdt, or he’d get him to cooperate. It didn’t hurt to try.

That’s why he was now making his way through the snow, body shivering intensely despite the two thick winter coats to protect him against the freezing temperatures, led by three Military Policemen carrying fresh supplies for the MPs down in the mine. Armin had offered to help them carry some of their stuff, since he was going the same way anyway and had a free arm left, but they waved him away, something about his injuries making him unfit to carry so much weight, that they got it all under control, he didn’t have to worry about it.

Their paths diverged after they pointed him towards the right building, and he made his way there, hands in his pockets to shield his soaked bandages from the cold air. He’d be happy to be inside to warm up his body again. 

Finally at the front door, he tested it and found it to be unlocked, so he let himself inside before frostbite could get his extremities. 

Even before he closed the door behind him again, he was already greeted with an enthusiastic “Armin!” Hange approached him, arms wide, a few drops of liquid spilling out of the cup held in one of their hands from the wild gesture. As was standard, it didn’t look like they’d gotten much sleep recently. “You made it here, good. Rough weather out there, huh?”

“Commander.” The warmth of the cabin was divine against his numb cheeks and he couldn’t wait to take place in front of the fire. Even inside, his shoulders were still shivering. 

He got a few firm pats on the shoulder. “It’s been a while since last we met. How’s that recovery going?”

Armin held up his bandaged hands, one of which Hange took and examined with great care. “I made it here, I couldn’t have a month ago. They advised against going down a dusty mine, but with proper bandage work, I should be able to protect myself from new infections.”

“Good,” they said, letting go of his hand and turning around again to walk into the building’s common area, beckoning with their free hand. “Take off your boots before you enter. Water’s a damn mess to get out of here. You can hang your stuff by the fire to dry and I’ll get you something to eat. Can’t have you working on an empty stomach!” 

He undid his boots and slid out of them, taking them with him to place by the fire. Once he’d taken off his coats and jumper and placed them by the fireplace together with his soaked blanket, he took the seat nearest to it, placing his bag against the coffee table in front of him before holding out his hands to warm them. Wet and cold. It would be a bad idea to keep his old bandages. 

Hange placed a hot bowl of soup and a few pieces of bread in front of him before placing down their own portion. Before they could sit down, Armin stopped them. 

“Commander, I need to refresh these and wash my hands. Can I get some warm water? It doesn’t need to be hot, just clean,” he requested as he started peeling away at his bandages. 

“Can it wait a few minutes? I’ll need to heat some water first.”

“That is fine, I just need to do it before I enter the mines.”

After briefly hanging a pot of water over the fire to heat, Hange mixed it with some cold water and placed it by Armin’s side on the coffee table before sitting down on the couch in front of him and starting on their own breakfast. Armin retrieved a fresh roll of bandages from his backpack before he got started. It was standard procedure for him by now: remove his bandages, then soak his hands into warm water for a few minutes as he stretched and bent his fingers before getting them out again, drying them thoroughly, and bandaging them again with a clean roll. He could eat after his journey, but preventing a relapse in infection was a higher priority.

Hange watched carefully, occasionally asking about his healing process. Slow, but things were getting better. His skin still looked rough around the edges and was still too stiff to allow for much finer movement. The good thing was that most of his feeling had returned, save for the areas above his thumbs where he barely felt softer touches. It would take years for him to make a full recovery, however with his current prognosis, he could start training for combat again in several months. Things were looking good. 

“Have you read them?” Hange changed the subject when the both of them were done eating. They motioned down to his bag, and Armin nodded.

“I have.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” he responded, digging through his bag and fishing out a folder, which he placed down on the table between them. “It’s as you said: useless and cryptic. I couldn’t learn much from the summary, it’s far too vague. I need more information.”

Hange reached for the folder, pulling it to their side of the table and leaving it there. “Ah, shame. So you haven’t changed your mind, then? I think you’ll sleep better at night if you don’t read the full version.”

“I can handle it. It’ll be detrimental to our efforts if you keep me in the dark. I already have a few uses in mind for the detailed report ahead of time.” Not that he would enjoy reading it, but it was a necessity to better understand everything.

Hange nodded as they stood up. “Suit yourself. Once you have your mind set on something you’re usually right, so I’ll let you make this call.” 

They walked away to retrieve the other documents and Armin’s eyes fell onto the folder again. Inside it were the summarised reports of Bertholdt’s interrogation in the mine, all of its contents confidential. It was sent over on his request when he first got the idea that despite everything, he still wanted to understand Bertholdt better — under the guise that he wanted to catch up to what had happened in his absence and that he could perhaps shed new light on their results and extract answers from the reports. He suspected he was just getting humoured when they agreed, since no one expected there to be any more results after such a long time, so he just had to show them that he was serious about this and persevered, insistent on paying a visit and getting the full file.

The records were pristine and vague. The first days, only two words could be found on the day reports: “Interrogated” and “Inconclusive”. No details on the methods, the duration, anything Bertholdt may have said or done, just these two words. On the third day, things changed to “sleep deprivation + starvation” with several results written down, most unintelligible or personal details that wouldn’t help against Marley. On the eighth day, things went back to interrogation and largely inconclusive results, as reported by the hour. That’s when Bertholdt started lying in his answers and interrogation became pointless, as noted at the end of the ninth and final day.

After that, the interrogation reports stopped. It looked like that would be it and Bertholdt would be left inside the mine until they found a way to make or obtain a new dose of serum. There were other reports of the experimentation that started in December, but none of these had as their goal to extract information, just to test the effects of anaesthetics, analgesics, poisons, and paralytics on the body of a shifter, but they usually were paired with a shifter-specific concoction. Most tests yielded no significant results in halting or stimulating healing, though one component lethal for normal humans stood out as a good paralytic for shifters. Painful and unstable paralysis, but enough to counteract one should the opportunity ever arise. Hange had enthusiastically filled him in on the successful and promising tests over breakfast.

For the island’s defences, all of this information was useless. Armin didn’t expect that he’d learn something new by reading the notes Hange meticulously penned down in real time during their interrogation sessions, but it would fill him in on what had already been said and done. Especially those non-stop conversations they held for five consecutive days under sleep deprivation. These documents were off-limits to even the other surviving members of the Survey Corps, kept on location with no copies.

Armin could only assume it was too brutal to write down in a report Hange knew would reach the eyes of the 104th eventually, possibly even the public. Maybe they were ashamed of what had to happen. Maybe, with how thinly-manned the Survey Corps had grown, they feared they’d lose the respect of their few remaining subordinates because they were forced to reach for such drastic measures. Maybe they wanted to spare their feelings, or maybe they expected that their sense of camaraderie was still strong enough to warrant losing faith in the Survey Corps upon reading the horrors they inflicted on their former friend. 

There was no truth to the latter. No one had talked that much about Bertholdt. Not even Eren, though he seemed to avoid the topic altogether in his recent collectedness. They all knew what was happening without having to be told and they didn’t discuss it, because any kinships of the past had been shattered when Bertholdt showed he was so prepared to kill them all and it felt inappropriate to sympathise with him. They avoided bringing him up around Armin when he was still hospitalised to avoid pouring more salt into his wounds. He was glad they did. The less he had to be reminded of the shifter’s existence while he was still confined to that hospital bed, the better.

The smack of a binder landing by him on the table pulled him out of his thoughts. Hange sat down again, crossing their legs and folding their hands over their knees. “I won’t lie, I’m curious to see what will come from this. You said you had an idea already?”

Armin reached for the binder and opened it, hurriedly rifling through the pages. In volume alone it already overshadowed the meagre folder he was sent. It seemed to contain every piece of detail they had on Bertholdt — information protocol, screening, military paperwork, assessments from his time spent in the 104th Training Regiment, information gathered that led to the discovery of his and Reiner’s identity, notes on the Colossal Titan, a wordy report on the Battle for Shiganshina, and finally all the details of his incarceration, including interrogation reports, the schematics for his safety harness, and his containment protocol. 

If this fell into the wrong hands, the outcome could be catastrophic.

“I do.” He closed the binder again and looked up from it, back at Hange.

Feeling he wouldn’t elaborate, Hange stood up. “I’m sure you’ll have your hands full with these for the rest of the day, if not the next few days. Let me know if you need anything and when you’re ready to make our descent.”

“Actually,” Armin immediately replied, “Before you go, I was curious how often he speaks to you these days. When you ask him questions or when he needs something from you.”

“He’s been real annoying,” Hange groaned. “Never answers my questions even when I give him incentive to do so. The only times he does talk to me is when he’s in pain after administering something. We tend to sedate him after that to make sure he still cooperates with us afterwards. Do you know how hard it is to inject a thrashing target even when he’s restrained?” They adjusted their glasses, pinching their nose bridge in the process. “At least when we don’t put him through too much pain and we take the edge off when it gets bad, he lets us carry out our tests with minimal resistance.”

Armin nodded, lifting the binder off the table and placing it on his lap instead. It sounded like Bertholdt had surrendered, only doing what he could to avoid more pain. Now might be a good time to question him. 

“So I don’t have to expect much cooperation.”

“Who knows,” Hange shrugged. “Apart from Eren, we don’t know much about what he thinks about his old comrades. Maybe he feels like you abandoned him, maybe you’re just another enemy like me. I don’t think you should expect even a word out of him, but if you believe you can get him to talk, I ain’t stopping you. I’m not sure if there’s anything meaningful he can tell you anyway.”

Armin made a mental note of that comment on Eren, deciding it was a topic for later. “Did you tell him I was going to come over one of these days?” he asked instead.

“No. I didn’t want to interfere with your process. If you wanted me to inform him ahead of time, you should’ve sent a message.”

“No, that’s ideal, actually. I think it’s better that he doesn’t know.” He thought for a moment, eyes sinking to the red cover of the binder, then looked up from it. “Do you know if he’s awake right now?”

Hange leaned onto the back of the couch. “We had to sedate him yesterday. He sleeps better when we do, so he probably got a full night. Unless he reacted badly to what we gave him, he should’ve been up for about an hour, since he lives by the wardens’ schedule,” Hange informed. “You want to go there now?” they added, tone questioning the decision.

“I do, if that’s okay.”

“What did I get you that binder for if you won’t even go through it?” Hange sighed.

Armin shrugged. “Reading material for when I’m down there, I suppose.”

Hange raised their eyebrows. “‘Reading material’? Is that what you’re going to call it, Armin?” 

“I— That’s not what I meant!” Armin defended, straightening his back and hands placating, feeling heat creep into his cheeks. “Not leisurely reading material, but…” Fingers tapped on his lap. “… If he refuses to talk to you, he will probably also refuse to talk to me. I’m staying with him until he does or until I get tired, so it’s useful to have something on me to go through while I wait. I can find inspiration for ways to convince him to speak as I go through it instead of just sitting there. That… That kind of reading material.”

The words rapid-fired out of his mouth with the last ones trailing off a little. The Commander let out a low chuckle. “Oh, I know. Don’t take it too seriously.” They fished a pocket watch out of their pocket and looked down on it before stashing it again. “I’m needed here in the afternoon, but we can go for a few hours no problem.”

“Actually… I was hoping that I could go alone,” Armin advocated. It earned him a weird look from Hange and he knew he might have to defend his request.

“Huh? Alone? Why?”

“Well, it’s just… He already has a negative image of you. If you stand there with me, he may choose to stay quiet the whole time. We did use to know each other, so maybe he’ll agree to talking if it’s just me.”

Hange pondered the matter for a moment. “Will you be able to take notes if you’re the one doing the talking?”

“You have taken notes under far more stressful circumstances, I believe.”

“Ah, I guess that’s true.” Then, they smiled at him. “Well, I trust you with this, Armin. I’m not so sure he’ll talk to you at all, but if you think you’ll get better results when you face him alone, I trust your judgement. I’ll go with you to drop you off, I need to pick up a couple of things anyway. After that, do what you think is best.”

It was validating to get the Commander’s praise, but he hadn’t gotten any results yet. No need to get ahead of himself. He nodded at Hange, a small “Thank you” accompanying the gesture before he slid the binder into his backpack and got up again.

“The mines have a constant temperature. You won’t find yourself getting cold down there anytime soon. Don’t drag all your coats with you, one will probably be more than enough to keep you warm.” They walked over to the building’s entrance. “I need to get the lift in working order, I’ll come get you when it’s ready. Shouldn’t be more than twenty, be sure you’re ready to go by then.” With that, they left.

And here Armin expected they’d make him walk the full way down. Considerate that he got to use the lift, but it reminded him of how poor his physical condition had gotten. Standing up so briefly, he already felt a mild soreness in his legs. He’d never make it to the depths of the mine like this, let alone back to the surface. He itched for his physicians to finally approve a more intensive exercise regime so that he could regain his lost weight and get in shape again. He wanted to heed Hange’s warning, but ever since Shiganshina, he was always cold. Maybe one coat was enough for the average visitor, but he didn’t want to stand there shivering when he had a confident impression to make. In the end, he grabbed both, holding one in his hand to put on after leaving the building. He considered grabbing his blanket too, but soaked as it still was, it wouldn’t do him any good.

Dressed and ready to leave, he sat down again to await Hange’s return. 

This was it. If he wanted to back out now, this was his final chance to do so. They wouldn’t exactly be eager to see him backpedal after they already went through the trouble of transporting him into the mine. He wasn’t going to run away from this. He’d already had second thoughts since he requested a chance to visit Bertholdt, not because everyone told him that he was wasting his time, but because he wasn’t sure if he truly wanted to face him again. There was no knowing how he’d react to Armin’s presence. If he would be angry and try to attack him, if he would attempt to find the most venomous words to yell at him, if he’d show fear, or if he’d just be indifferent and refuse to talk in defiance of Paradis. Without his legs, there wasn’t much he could do, but it was still a daunting confrontation.

He wasn’t afraid, but he was aware of his own limits. With his recent dip into darker thoughts, he couldn’t afford to let someone who’d already tried to kill him once freely pry into his psyche to further erode it. It would benefit Marley and be a detriment to Paradis, so it could very well be a strategy the shifter would utilise, and Armin needed to be prepared for that. 

There was already no going back. Turning back now already meant he was running away from something that could help Paradis and something that could offer him catharsis. That wasn’t how he did things.

A knock on the door signalled everything was good to go, and Armin grabbed his backpack. Hurrying over, he put on his second coat and fastened his backpack before he left. Hange awaited him outside, walking away as soon as he opened the door. Ever since they inherited the Commander position from Erwin Smith, they were so much more pressed to get to places. The only reason they had time to come over to Tourze to carry out tests was because of the heavy snowfall that forced them to cut down on most operations anyway and left them more time in their schedule, but even then, their schedule overflowed with meetings and paperwork. Without Moblit around to assist, the workload seemed heavier.

The two of them made their way towards the lift — an old but sturdy metal and wooden contraption that allowed several people to go down several levels at once, powered by horses. Hange broke the silence between them. 

“We only use the lift very rarely. It requires the expertise of multiple people to operate, so we usually only use it to transport heavy goods or those with leg injury. It’s funny to think, really. The last person who was brought down with it who wasn’t one of us, was the Colossal when we first brought it here. We weren’t going to spend hours lugging someone like that down through the shafts after we had already severed its legs, now were we?” 

Hange smiled at Armin during their explanation. Armin simply nodded along, responding with a “Naturally” when they were done, slightly uncomfortable by their wording but keeping it in the back of his mind for now. 

They reached the lift, its cabin already loaded with boxes of supplies. Since the lift didn’t operate often, now was a good time to take along a bunch of supplies as well. An MP accompanied them into the cabin and began to work on securing the door and communicating with his colleague operating the structure.

“You should probably sit down, Armin. The cabin has a tendency to go down a bit roughly. It’s pretty old, after all.”

“Right.” He instinctively wanted to protest at first, but knew for certain that if he kept standing, he’d get knocked on his ass before they even passed the first level. Grabbing the railing, he led his body until he was sitting down, legs crossed. Hange gave the signal that they were ready to go and the cart quavered and creaked as it began its descent. 

Once departed, Hange sat down on the floor in front of Armin, grabbing a notepad and a pencil off of one of the crates. “Alright, let’s go over some practical details! You can write down anything you need to in this notepad. I urge you to be thorough, Armin, every word he says can be of importance. In fact, write down what you tell him and ask him as well, it’s useful to know later. Especially if you talk to him about anything written in his file. And I don’t have to remind you there are things he shouldn’t know about.”

“I will, Commander. And you don’t,” Armin responded, taking the notebook and the pencil when they were offered to him and storing them inside his backpack. 

“There’s an information protocol at the front. You’re smart enough to figure this out on your own, but he shouldn’t get his hands on any of these. If you need to leave in a hurry, secure the folder first.”

“Grab the folder first when I have to leave in a hurry, got it.”

“Of course, you can’t inform him about his containment protocol at the back. The other documents, I’d prefer if you kept as much of the information in there from him, but if you believe that divulging some of this information will benefit us, then I trust that judgement. The containment protocol is, however, entirely off-limits. The same goes for the safety equipment’s schematics. For the rest, use your mind. Don’t specify the experiment results and methods, it could cause a placebo effect, for example.”

“Of course, that makes sense,” Armin replied, scratching the scarring under his chin as he did.

“Perfect! Moving on, then… With Bertholdt’s age and how long he hasn’t been to Marley, I don’t think that he possesses much useful information he can tell us in the first place. He also lied to us a lot when we worked with him back in September. Even when he was telling the truth, there were always some details that weren’t adding up. Those are the two reasons we initially gave up our efforts. My time was better spent elsewhere, too…”

Hange seemed slightly annoyed recalling the experience. Armin wondered if Bertholdt chose to lie as a sign of resistance, or if he was too tired to think straight and tell them what he knew. When Sannes was tortured and they all had to listen to it as it happened a room away, the whole procedure sounded stressful. He’d have to find out just how brutal they’d been with Bertholdt when he got a chance to comb through those records to formulate an answer to this question.

“If he’s had the chance to rest, maybe he’ll be more cooperative,” Armin suggested.

“You’d think so, but that wasn’t the case. When we came to get him for testing two months after we stopped interrogating him, he was irrationally terrified of us. Wouldn’t believe that we weren’t going to resume interrogating him no matter how often we told him that we weren’t going to hurt him this time. Can’t exactly blame him, we dragged him onto the same table where he was interrogated. Kid probably thought it was going to happen all over again.”

“He didn’t believe you when you said you weren’t going to harm him?”

Hange shook their head. “To the contrary. He said he was done and that he didn’t wish to fight anymore, but when I asked him some questions, he still didn’t answer. I didn’t press the matter because I had tests to carry out, but even after he had plenty of time to rest and think and we assured him — no, _proved_ to him — that we weren’t there to hurt him, he wasn’t going to cooperate. I can’t lie when I say, Armin, that I am very curious to know what you’ll try.”

Was that helpful or was that an obstacle? Armin scratched his cheek, looking up at the opening of the mineshaft. They’d sunk rather deep into the mine already, so far that light levels had diluted to a much lower intensity and his eyes hurt just from looking up at the bright sky after getting adjusted to the darkness.

“I know you really want me to tell you, but the issue is… I haven’t decided yet. It all depends on how he reacts to me. Back when we trained together, we were…”

He paused for a brief moment, searching for the right wording. Something not too familiar, something not too distant. Maybe his image was tinted by the recent happenings, but he couldn’t say that they were too close during their training days.

“… somewhat good friends. While all of that is behind me now, I might be able to use that to my advantage. I want to connect with him again. I don’t wish to undermine your efforts,” Armin tapped his knees with his fingers, “but… No one who was down there with him used to know him. I did. It might make the difference.”

“That makes sense,” Hange replied, a hand on their chin to think. “I wanted to bring some of you in here, but you were in a coma and I don’t believe that the others would have agreed to it. I asked Eren only because he asked if there was any way he could be here. If he hadn’t requested an audience, I wouldn’t have invited him either.”

Armin’s eyes widened. “Eren was here? When?”

“Early October. He didn’t tell you?” Hange frowned.

“I know he sometimes left for a few days around that period, that’s all. He never told me what he was doing. I thought that the Queen or the military leaders asked for his presence.”

It was only the second time Eren had left Armin’s side at the hospital for an extended period of time. The first time, it was to go to the memorial organised to honour the heroes who had sacrificed their lives to retake Wall Maria and to commend the few who had survived the battle. Eren insisted on staying by Armin’s side through it, and it took Armin a day to convince him that he’d be fine without Eren and Mikasa with him for a few hours. In the end, Armin ended up sleeping through most of their absence, and by the time he woke up again they were back, each sporting a medal around their neck. Had Armin not been in excruciating pain, he would’ve taken his time to admire the badges of respect they had earned. The one he’d earn as soon as he was in a state to leave his bed.

The ceremony had done much to help Eren find inner calm. With the sudden barrage of memories from reading his father’s books about the outside world, he often wound up momentarily disoriented or emotional. He didn’t like to show it in front of Armin, like he couldn’t handle it alongside the pain of his infected burns. He gave Armin the benefit of the doubt more often and stopped babying him all the time, disappearing for short periods of time every now and again. It concerned Armin as much as it assured him that Eren was healing.

When he said that he had to leave for something confidential, Armin didn’t question it. Paradis, as they’d come to know was their island’s name, was a mess after the knowledge of the outside world got released to the public. With things so turbulent, Armin was surprised that Eren wasn’t borrowed all the time.

Turns out that he was down in these mines to assist with the interrogation efforts. Armin wasn’t so sure if his presence was meant to help them obtain tangible information through his former bond to Bertholdt, or if it was through terror. He might find out from the logs.

“I suppose he didn’t want to burden you to know that he participated in the interrogation,” Hange suggested. “If I’d known, I would’ve asked him if he wanted you to know about that.”

Armin shook his head. “I understand what he had to do and why he wanted to be the one to do it. It won’t change the way I think about him.”

“Ah, good, then we won’t have any issues.” Hange smiled at him, leaning back against one of the supply crates and adjusting their glasses. “In any case, once you’re down there, there are some safety precautions you need to take. Just because he’s impaired doesn’t mean he’s defenseless. I’ve gotten some mean punches from that arm when he panicked and we didn’t have him restrained as well as we thought.”

“You didn’t put him behind bars?”

“Bars? In an old mine? It’s all support beams down there, no doors or proper gates. We’ve put him in one of the dead ends and blocked off the mineshaft’s entrance with a pallet of planks and some chains with a lock. So far he hasn’t shown the will to escape. He knows he won’t get far, but if he gets the chance, I do believe he’d take it, so we’re still careful.”

“There’s no way for me to talk to him from the outside?”

“Fear not. I could post someone beside you but that will probably have an influence on how he reacts to you.”

It wasn’t the most comforting thought in the world that he’d have no defences against Bertholdt. If he really became aggressive, Armin could always just leave. Even if he was wounded and out of shape, someone without legs most likely lacked mobility. If he could avoid a fight, he would. Then again, it was Bertholdt they were talking about. Who knew how well he had adjusted?

“It will. I should go alone.”

“You should take a set of swords with you just in case.”

Armin shook his head. “No, I don’t think I should.” He quickly amended his tone and his words. “With all due respect, if I take a weapon with me, I already assume that he’ll be an aggressor. It doesn’t make a good impression and he’d feel rightfully threatened, I believe.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Hange sighed. “Always be ready to defend yourself, then. You’re authorised to use whatever force you deem necessary.”

_If you think violence will get him to talk, then use it_ , was the unspoken addition to that sentence. Armin responded with a firm nod, looking up again. The morning sky was much farther away now as they descended deeper and deeper into the mine. It slightly unsettled Armin, but he didn’t let it get to him.

“Hey, can I just say,” the MP interspersed, and Armin looked down again to face him instead, “the Colossal’s been inactive for months now. The only major activity we’ve seen was during the first week the Commander started testing again, but it got used to it and things went back to normal after that. It’s usually pretty much lifeless and stays in the same spot day and night. You should be fine.”

“Thank you,” Armin responded. Lethargy was to be expected in his situation. It wouldn’t be helpful in his endeavour to get him to talk, but it was better than resistance. 

The silence which followed alerted him that the conversation ended there and Armin sat back against the railing as he let his thoughts simmer. He considered different conversation structures in his head, planned ahead for what to do in specific scenarios, what he wanted to say and what he wanted to avoid saying. 

With a shock, the cabin came to a halt as they reached the bottom of the mine. 

“Ah, we’re here. Good,” Hange announced, lifting themselves up by the railing before extending a hand to Armin to help him up, which he accepted. “Welcome to hell,” they added, “hopefully, you can get some good work done here.”

Armin looked up. The opening of the mine was now a small speck of light above him, barely discernible against the pitch-black walls of the natural cave structure. Hell was definitely the right word. He took a moment to find his footing while Hange opened the cabin door.

“What depth are we at?” Armin asked.

“473 meters, give or take! This is one of Paradis’ deepest and oldest mines,” they said as they picked up a few of the boxes in the cabin and carefully stepped onto the rocky floor of the mine. “We chose it exactly because of its depth, to make sure that even if something goes wrong and the Colossal Titan regenerates, it can’t get very far. Even if it explodes the place, only a handful of people would die and it’d have no way to reach the surface since it would have just blown up the tunnels above it connecting to the outside world. The whole structure might even collapse and take it out. Every problem solves itself.”

Armin nodded. The choice to detain Bertholdt inside a mine always made sense to him, but it was interesting to hear the thought process behind the measure from its orchestrator. 

“Can you grab a couple of lanterns for us, Armin? We’ve got our hands full.” Hange motioned over to one of the tables near a cave wall, covered in various mining supplies that were no longer in use as well as a collection of lanterns. 

“Right!” Armin walked over to the table and lit two of the lanterns, one for each hand. If the passages weren’t lit, they wouldn’t want to risk getting lost if one lantern failed on them. Once done, he made his way towards the cabin where his two fellow travellers were unloading the supplies. He suggested helping but they told him to just hold onto the lanterns and wait for them to finish. Once they had finished, he followed them to the entrance of the mineshafts, where Hange placed down their crates and started clipping something to their gear. A safety line, perhaps?

“It’s a bit of a maze down here, so it’s best that you walk ahead of us. We’ll send you in the right direction, but it helps to see where we’re going. Not scared in the dark, I hope?” they said as they finished up and picked up their supplies again.

“Ah, no, I’m not,” Armin replied. He took a look inside the dark tunnel, his heartbeat stilling as he walked inside followed by the others. 

They made their way through the many tunnels, Armin at the front and his two companions behind him. If it were up to him to lead them, they’d get lost in here in no time. A diverging path every ten or so meters, the many tunnels snaking and turning with no reasonable pattern to them, and that for hundreds of meters on end. The MP was expert in guiding him to take the correct turns. Armin briefly considered the navigational skills needed to get through this place without getting lost, and tried to memorise the route they were taking, looking for any landmarks to identify his location by at a later visit. 

The maze must’ve been one of Tourze’s other perks. Even if Bertholdt managed to regenerate and chose to escape in human form, he wouldn’t get far without getting hopelessly lost, even with a lantern on him. The only way he’d stand a chance would be with a hostage. Everything about this was meticulously thought out. It didn’t seem possible back in Shiganshina, but they’d come through and managed to safely detain one of the most dangerous weapons known to humanity. It truly stood out as an impressive achievement for mankind. 

After a good fifteen minutes of walking, a light source that was not Armin’s own finally showed up in the distance. 

“We’re here!” Hange commented. “Still holding up?”

“I’m fine.” His legs and back were starting to ache pretty badly and his arms were weary from holding out both lanterns in front of him, pretty out of breath after the trek. The exercise did him good, he needed to get in shape again after lying in bed for months on end with no physical activity, but he could do without the dust assaulting his airways at every breath and making him cough every once in a while. 

“Good!” Hange said as they entered the broader, lit-up section of the mine. A sort of main area with an elevated ceiling, with several chairs and tables placed along the cavern and a handful of MPs in the room. They greeted the new arrivals and got a greeting back, after which Hange and the MP dropped off their supplies on a table and engaged in small talk with their companions that didn’t much interest Armin. 

His heart was beating fast, breathing elevated from the walk down into this area of the mine. He focused on steadying his breathing. The last thing he wanted was to make an impression of weakness on Bertholdt. He looked around the cave section — clearly a common area where the wardens spent most of their time, tables strewn with playing cards and dice, mugs, and dirty bowls and plates. He placed down both lanterns on an empty spot, too lost in thought to see one had flickered out.

“—exactly what I’ll tell him. But that’s for later.” They patted Armin on the shoulder a few times, harder than was comfortable, making him yelp and flinch. “Let’s not force Armin to stand around here to listen to small talk. Is the Colossal awake yet?”

“Fed it about an hour ago,” the shorter of the two MPs responded, crossing his arms. “Should be awake right now. Not that it makes a difference.” His words were accompanied by a badly disguised belittling glare in Armin’s direction that he chose to ignore.

“Perfect. I need someone to bring him there.”

“I’ll go,” one of the taller MPs volunteered, standing up from her seat. She went to retrieve several lanterns and Armin prepared to follow, but before he could, Hange stopped him by laying a hand on his shoulder and leaning closer to him, voice hushed but reassuring.

“Take good care of yourself first when you’re down there, Armin. It’s not worth it to push yourself past your limits just to get answers. Prioritise your own health, mental or otherwise.”

Maybe it was meant as concern, but to Armin, it felt infantilising more than anything. He knew it hadn’t been Hange’s intention. They were looking out for him, nothing more, they were just concerned with his well-being. But hadn’t he more than proven himself against Bertholdt in Shiganshina? This was nothing compared to a fight to the death. Ever since he got burned, people wouldn’t stop handling him with kid gloves. What must he do to stop receiving this treatment?

“Thank you, Commander. But I assure you that I will be fine.”

He received a confident smile in return as Hange let go of him. “Good luck down there,” they said with a mild wave.

“Thank you.” Armin nodded back, grabbing a lantern for himself before making his way towards the MP waiting for him at the entrance of a lit passage. He wanted to mentally prepare himself for what was about to happen, but the MP interrupted his thoughts.

“Do you really think you’ll get anything out of the Colossal?”

Armin looked up at her, caught off-guard by the question. The wardens’ did nothing to mask their distrust of his abilities. The best he could do was to avoid antagonising them. “I think so, yes. We’ve known each other for years. I know more about him than the Commander does, which is why I think it’s worth it to talk to him.”

“We already tried everything, kiddo. If it was going to talk, it would’ve done so long ago.”

“Have you sat down at a table and tried to have a conversation?”

The MP let out a huff, an amused smile on her face. “A conversion with a monster leads nowhere. It’s your time you’re wasting, but I can’t object if a bit of entertainment keeps it quiet at night.”

Armin decided not to push the issue, already feeling he’d overdone it. At the end of the day, he didn’t expect that the people who thought of Bertholdt as a monster would try to talk over a cup of tea. Not that Armin would make it that familiar, but it was leagues removed from what they had done to him. 

They turned a corner. The next part of the passage was unlit. Walking on in silence, the tunnels felt narrower than they had earlier. Taking a few more turns and walking straight at a branching path, Armin’s heart jumped when a wooden pallet chained to support beams finally came into sight after walking for a minute with only void laying in their path.

The MP clipped her keys free from her belt after hanging up one of her lanterns on a hook in the support beam. She fiddled with the lock keeping the pallet in place, all unlocked save for the one at eye level. Armin watched on, quietly cursing himself for not turning back when he still could, but calming himself at the thought that he was confronting Bertholdt head-on without backing down. Not many would choose to do what he was doing right now.

The lock opened and before Armin knew it, the MP pulled open the wooden gate. He almost expected something to jump out at him, but instead he was met with darkness — now partially illuminated by their lanterns. He had anticipated this from the unlit passages, but it was interesting to confirm that they kept Bertholdt locked in a passage devoid of any light. Armin made a mental note of it in case he could use that later.

Lost in thought, he almost didn’t notice that the MP had already walked inside, waiting behind the gate for him to join. He did so after the slightest hesitation, eyes searching for his target as soon as he entered the improvised cell, but he wasn’t too hard to find.

Bertholdt lay on one side of the mineshaft, on his back, with the left side of his body pressed tightly against the wall. Holding up his lantern but only glancing his way through the corner of his eyes, Armin could see that he had his eyes closed, chest rising and falling softly. It would be better if he weren’t asleep — having him wake up to the presence of an enemy would be less than ideal. It complicated things, but didn’t make it impossible.

Armin didn’t realise he was holding his breath until the MP bumped into him, her elbow digging into his side, and the air left his lungs in a huff.

“I’m going to return upstream. I’ll leave the gate open for you, but don’t forget to close it behind you again when you leave. We’ll come lock it again later. The Colossal knows better than to try to leave, especially if someone’s observing, so there shouldn’t be any issues while you’re here and after you leave again.”

“Right,” Armin nodded, and the MP made her way back into the hallway after returning the gesture and wishing him good luck. 

Armin kept his eyes on her until she disappeared behind a corner. Finally, with more effort than he’d expected it would take, he turned his head again to look at Bertholdt. He was still asleep, his right arm wrapped over his chest to gently hold onto his left shoulder. He looked at peace, not yet alarmed by Armin's presence. Maybe Hange was wrong about the amount of sleep he’d gotten that night, because the light and the noise weren’t enough to wake him. 

He’d been told about it beforehand, but it was still an unusual sight to see three of his limbs gone — legs amputated a good 15 centimeters below his hips and left arm completely gone to make space for the equipment that prevented him from regenerating. When they first captured him, they had to improvise something to put pressure on his limbs: they had wrapped tight textile around the ends of his sliced appendages and pierced his flesh with blades in the hopes it would be enough to keep him from regenerating. As easy as it would be to amputate them whenever they’d grown past the knee or elbow, Bertholdt had lost so much blood already after half his torso had been emptied of its organs in his final fight that they didn’t want to push his limits. It would be a shame if he came back after ten minutes of not breathing only to lose the power of the Colossal Titan to the void because he bled out.

The primitive bindings worked, but Hange wanted more control, so they commissioned a team of engineers to design a new set of equipment. They came up with a set of safety equipment much like the military’s 3DMG that capped off his limbs and surgically grafted the metal and leather to his flesh, gear running over his torso to keep the whole arrangement in place and prevent it from accidentally or purposely getting loose. Even after they let him regenerate an arm to give him more autonomy and reduce the workload of his maintenance, he wouldn’t be able to do much. The gear was virtually impossible to take off without the right keys and tools to unlock the various components, and that was after cutting its edges out of his flesh. A lot of money had gone into ensuring that Bertholdt would never again fully regenerate.

Armin took a moment to breathe, suddenly aware of how hot he felt from the walk down into this area of the mine. To his left, he saw a sturdy-looking wooden crate, likely used in case any of the guards needed to be posted inside the cell. It’d be perfect. He walked towards it and placed his lantern and backpack down, carefully, so as not to alert the sleeping shifter. He undid the buttons of one of his coats and took it off, placing it down on the wood to have something soft to sit down on. Hange had been right, the mine had a cool but pleasant temperature incomparable to the frost of the surface. He wasn’t too worried about not following the advice because now he had something to pad the rough-looking wood with.

Retrieving the notebook and pencil from his backpack, he looked over at Bertholdt again, studying his features with greater care now that his eyes had adjusted to distinguishing smaller details in the dim lighting. He looked much thinner than he did when Armin fought him in Shiganshina. Lean before, now better described as gaunt and emaciated. His shoulders had definitely narrowed down from the loss of muscle and his bones poked out of his skin even more prominently than before. 

It was most visible in his face, his cheeks no longer round and his features sunken with a generally unhealthy look to him. Not that this was easy to tell, with the amount of dirt that caked his skin, moreso on his hands and neck than on his face. His shoulder-length matted hair showed that he hadn’t been given the opportunity to take care of his appearance. Judging by the crude way the sleeve and legs of his dress shirt and pants had been cut loose — the textile unraveling where blades hastily cut the clothing to their appropriate length — and with the sorry state they both were in — covered in dirt from lying on the dusty floor day and night and with an overabundance of dried blood specking the collar — Armin couldn’t imagine he’d been offered a change of clothes or a chance to bathe in the months he’d been here. 

Neglectful but not unexpected. He couldn’t imagine that mankind’s worst enemy would get treated delicately by the people he had tormented. 

So this was it. One word, and Armin would enter one of the most gruelling conversations he’d had to face in quite a while. He crossed his legs and straightened his back, placing down the notebook beside him and opening it to the first page. Empty. No notes left by Hange to distract him with, so he was forced to push on. Tapping his fingers on it, he breathed in and out deeply a few times, then decided it was better to bite the bullet and go. He placed both hands on one knee, determined that he was ready to proceed.

“Bertholdt,” Armin called out, his voice calm and confident. " _Let’s talk_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly a filler chapter, but it was unavoidable. I have absolutely no idea how this chapter is 10k words, it felt much more like 5k when I wrote _and_ read it.
> 
> To be real, this chapter is me testing the waters on writing character interaction and all that, especially exploring a voice for Armin’s character and doing some exposition. It shows I’m new at this whole writing business. A bit too long, a bit boring, but if I don’t do this I’ll get issues later since I’ve never really written any other characters except Bertholdt. I find Armin hard to grasp considering his enjoyment of his morbid pragmatism towards enemies and the inconsistency of his character in canon, which is funny because he was my favourite character since 2014. Not to mention that canon removes much of his trauma through healing and not remembering nearly dying, so I had to take a detour to explore how I wanna write him.
> 
> Sorry to both Armin and Bertholdt for what I have done to them, there was no way around writing the repercussions of Shiganshina for either of them. It started out as an obstacle but I managed to make it relevant in the whole storyline and now it’s no longer a bug, but a feature! It’s all leading to something tangible, less edgy.
> 
> I’m pretty sure it’ll be a standard that my author’s note at the end of each chapter almost exceeds the chapter itself in length. Since the first chapter, I’ve written 44k more words for this fic (it helped me win NaNoWriMo!), and I feel like I’ve settled on an ending. Hurray! The bad news is that at this pace, the ending won’t arrive for another 200k words, 300k if I keep taking detours like this. The events of chapter 6 should’ve been the ending of chapter 2, if you want to know how much info got added to this. I also want to make a sister fic to this one that’ll give a different view on the events, but it won’t be there for at least a very long time. When it happens, I’ll definitely make note of it!
> 
> I sometimes talk about this fic on my twitter so follow me there if you want - [AruBerus](https://twitter.com/AruBerus), usually referred to as just 🐍. I'm also drawing some stuff for each chapter, you can find the one for this chapter [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/post/637190773885059072/who-we-are-today-chapter-2-bedrock-the-long) and all of them [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/tagged/hand-project/chrono). That second link will definitely have spoilers as more chapters show up.
> 
> Big thanks to my beta readers [Gwenyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenyn_bright) and [T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intonerthree), definitely go give their works a read!


	3. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written during NaNoWriMo.
> 
> ** **

To face monsters, one needs to be able to leave behind their humanity — for someone who can’t throw away anything, will never be able to change anything.

What was it that he would have to give up to face a monster who killed thousands? This monster who had lived among them for years as if he was one of them, who had wanted them all to die, who had come within a hair’s breadth of becoming his murderer, who had succeeded in becoming the tormentor who kept him up for months?

Would it be his own humanity — to do what Hange had done months prior, to force compliance out of said monster — and in the process become a monster himself?

Or would it be his self-preservation — to swallow the fear that currently washed over his body in waves, almost paralysing him when Bertholdt’s breathing stopped after calling out his name and there was no longer a way out of this situation — at the cost of losing his emotional integrity? 

How would he face such a monster like he had in Shiganshina when his mind was currently ablaze, no matter how powerless the shifter lay before him in his current situation? This wasn’t Shiganshina. This wasn't the battle he had already won, the battle he had already  _ survived. _ This was different. This was a situation where he was in full control — if only because of physical factors; at the very least, he knew his opponent was much too weakened to contest his words and actions.

There was no reason to feel so on edge, but that thought failed to calm him down.

Another spike of anxiety surged through Armin’s chest when Bertholdt squeezed his eyes shut harder, then cracked them open, clearly annoyed at the source of light in his normally dark makeshift cell. The shifter inhaled sharply, then groaned under his breath as he parted his lips slightly. The strain on the arm still wrapped around him loosened until he let go of his shoulder and let it fall next to his body instead. His hand was turned upwards, wrapped in tight bandages that bound it into a fist as a safety measure to prevent him from prying at his equipment. There was a slight tremble to him now that he was awake, but he didn’t seem to have taken note of Armin just yet.

Armin took a deep breath. The only way to get results was to go forward with self-confidence. His nerves steadied now that he’d had a moment to reflect on what he was here to do. There was that determination he needed to go on.

“Bertholdt,” he repeated, a little bit louder now.

This caught the shifter’s attention. In one swift motion, his eyes fell onto Armin’s, widening for a couple of seconds as he made sense of the situation. 

“I want to talk,” Armin continued, tone too soft for his own liking. Bertholdt remained quiet, his eyes narrowing again as he closed his mouth. There was a brief glimmer of fear on his face, but it went as soon as it came, replaced by something indifferent, almost defiant as he stared back at Armin.

It looked like he’d go down the route of silence, expression coated in a subtle venom. Armin almost felt himself falter, but before it showed on his face he chose to keep his own expression collected, not giving into these tactics to get himself swept away by the adversity of a glaring match. Better to show who was in control here than to let himself be played in the first seconds.

When the taller male didn’t answer, Armin knew what lay ahead of him. 

“It has been some time since we last spoke.” This time, he succeeded in speaking in a solid, controlled tone. He looked down at the ground for a brief moment.  “Four months and three days, to be exact. Since September.” Making eye contact again, he waited very briefly for a reaction, but apart from the subtle changes in Bertholdt’s facial expression as he processed the information, he didn’t get anything. He hadn’t exactly given Bertholdt anything to respond to, what was he supposed to reply to anyway?

“Things were a bit different back then than they are now. You didn’t have the intention to have a conversation, only to tell us to die.” A slight frown, no response.  “I understand, though. The odds were uncertain, your plan just failed, you worried for Reiner,” the frown faded, replaced by the slight widening of his eyes,  “you didn’t have much of a choice but to do what you thought was best given the messy circumstances. Isn’t that right?”

Breathing steadily as a tremble periodically ran through his body, Bertholdt remained quiet, not breaking eye contact even once. Neither did Armin. He waited it out, wondering if the uneasy silence would compel him to answer. When the situation didn’t prove tense enough yet to convince the shifter to speak, Armin decided to continue his monologue.

“I wanted to visit you sooner. I would have if I hadn’t been in the hospital for the past months.” Armin held up his bandaged hands, backs turned towards Bertholdt.  “This is permanent damage. It took me long to recover from your burns and the process was painful. It may take me years before my skin is fully healed, and even after that, you’ll have left a mark on me.” 

He let down his hands again, resting his palms on the edge of the crate. He only got the same, serious look in return — unmoving, unblinking, staring him down like a caged predator would its prey. Armin quickly banished the thought from his mind, translating it into confident words.

“I think you’re lucky you will never know this pain. I’ve often imagined how convenient it would be to have healing.” The muscles of Armin’s fingers tensed at the memories that entered the forefront of his mind and he tilted his head just a bit.  “No battle scars, no painful recovery, all evidence of anything that ever happened to your body gone after a day. It’s practical. Enticing.”

Maybe the look of disgust on Bertholdt’s face was warranted given the implications of Armin’s words. It was good for him to know the damage he had done, but this was a little too much without something to soften his words. Putting his hands back over his knees, Armin slightly tilted his head forward.

“… Though I suppose there are some wounds that even your healing cannot mend. Your mind, for example. Neither can it prevent you from feeling pain when it’s dealt to you or let you take back the things you did to others and undo the things that were  _ done _ to you. We haven’t found the extent of damage that will kill you yet, but I’m sure that it can’t bring you back from the dead every single time, can it? It must be exhausting. It isn’t all just convenience.”

A soft, uneasy sigh. The right moment to get back on track.

“But that’s beside the point. Had you chosen to talk, maybe you wouldn’t be here right now. Maybe things would’ve played out differently and you’d be on the surface. Or you’d be back home already.”

That’s when Bertholdt finally broke eye contact, glancing down for several seconds. Then, looking just beyond Armin’s right side first, he looked him back in the eyes, urging him to continue.

“Our nations could’ve been at peace if any of you had come forward to talk instead of killing us all without communicating,” Armin stressed.  “Now, we are locked in a cold war with an enemy whose movements we cannot even begin to predict. They can be back tomorrow or in ten years, with no way for us to anticipate when it’ll happen. Because we don’t know, we have no choice but to be prepared to meet them with all-out military action. We can no longer trust that diplomacy is a viable option if our odds are even lower now than they were in the past.”

Bertholdt again didn’t react, and this time it was Armin’s turn to turn his gaze onto the ground in front of him. He could feel his own neutral expression sink, but given the subject matter, he allowed it to happen.

“… At least, that’s Paradis’ official position. The fact is… We have no way of knowing. If we close off the avenue of peace through negotiation, then we have already dedicated ourselves to solving this conflict through violence. Even if we open ourselves up to the possibility of talking to Marley, most of the military wants to invest in our defences and nothing else.”

Armin looked up at Bertholdt again, eyes meeting once more.  “I think you and I both agree that this is a horrific attitude.”

He tried to read the shifter’s expression at the mention of violence, but besides an impatient disinterest, not much more was legible. Where else could he pry?

“The Survey Corps still believes that peace through negotiation shouldn’t be off the table. That is also my own stance. Reviewing Grisha Yeager’s journals about the outside world, there were so many opportunities to solve our conflict through deals and talks. I don’t believe that what happened over the past five years has ruined those opportunities, but it will be more difficult now that it’s just you on the island. Still… I don’t believe it is impossible.”

Grabbing the notebook and uncrossing his legs, he placed it down in his lap and scribbled down a couple of keywords on what he was saying, continuing as he wrote.

“As things are, our only option is to take a shot in the dark. We have the journals to base ourselves on, but those are over 20 years old by now. And as detailed as they are, they just do not live up to a personal account. Not to mention that Marley’s outlook on us may have changed entirely in recent years because of the harbour incident, not to mention how what happened in Shiganshina and your mission failure changed things. We have no way of knowing any of this, neither do we have the necessary insights to anticipate Marley would do next, and it’s hampering our ability to prepare ourselves for the type of opponent we might face. Every enemy dies the same when hit with a bullet, but in negotiation, there are so many different factors to keep in mind depending on our opponent’s attitude. Factors that would make the difference between peace and war. Factors only  _ you _ know from lived experience.”

Finishing scribbling down the details, Armin looked over at Bertholdt again, his head no longer tilted Armin’s way, hooded eyes looking straight at the ceiling of the mineshaft with not much interest nor engagement legible in his expression. Armin wasn’t sure if he should read it as apathy or as sadness. 

“We’re not in Shiganshina anymore. We have time to talk without endangering our lives. We can make well-thought out decisions that benefit not only our own, but the other nation as well. We don’t have to be enemies anymore the way we were back then.”

Armin shifted his position ever so slightly, making sure to straighten his back.  “I’ve come to talk to you because I think you can be a key player in ensuring the freedom and safety of the Eldians of Marley and Paradis, Bertholdt.”

Nothing for a few seconds. No shivering, no breathing, nothing. Then, Bertholdt’s eyes fell to a tighter squint before they closed entirely.

“This,” Armin continued, folding his hands over the notebook,  “is a way for you to contribute to international peace without any bloodshed. In fact, you’ll be preventing many innocent lives from being taken. Isn’t that better than knowing your silence contributed to the slaughter of a million?” 

Bertholdt resumed his breathing, but aside from that, everything remained the same. 

Nothing? Not even after that? Armin had half expected it, but was also half surprised that this didn’t cause any reaction in the shifter. He had to pry deeper, try just a little harder to go after his ideals and make it more personal. He thought for a second, but didn’t need more than that to figure out where he wanted to go next.

“You once said someone needed to have blood on their hands, that this was why you did what you did. That you didn’t want to kill, that it hurt so much. I still believe that you were speaking the truth. But no one needs to have blood on their hands. Not if you are there to make sure we have the up-to-date information we need to negotiate peace.”

Armin’s eyes narrowed, head tilting just slightly.  “Isn’t that exactly what you want?”

A gentle nasal sigh proved to him that Bertholdt was still listening, but there was no answer. Armin wasn’t sure if he was just tired or if he wasn’t buying anything he was saying, but so long as he received this information, he could mull it over in his head, possibly change his mind on staying silent. It was unlikely Hange told him much about what was happening on the surface, so what he heard now was the largest barrage of new information he’d gotten in a long time. He would think it over, whether he wanted to or not. 

Despite everything that had changed, Armin was rather certain that he’d used exactly that which Bertholdt valued to sway him. He didn’t expect it to be easy, but it still didn’t sit well with him the way he stubbornly kept up his silence. Armin wringed his hands, mildly frustrated despite this being one of his most expected outcomes. It looked like he was going to have to wait it out and see if Bertholdt changed his mind anytime soon.

“I understand that I’m not giving you an easy choice here, Bertholdt,” Armin finally said after a few minutes of quiet observation.  “What I’m asking you to consider is not a betrayal of Marley. You don’t need to defect or switch sides. See it as a promotion to a Marleyan diplomat on a mission to ensure peace with a foreign nation. That sounds a lot better than Paradis’ prisoner, doesn’t it?”

He paused, not because he still hoped for a reaction, but because he wanted the shifter to have the time to consider what he was saying. It would be bad to overload him with too much information and risk him not processing it all. Every word Armin said was pivotal to convincing him, he had to process it all properly.

“It’s exactly what you came here to do, except it leaves more survivors with a better outcome. There are no downsides to this. If you agree, I will have it arranged for you to be taken to the surface to talk to the upper military branches. Instead of staying in this dark mine and being treated like something less than human, you’d get to sleep in a real bed, eat real food. You’ll be a lot more comfortable up there. I don’t have much authority so long as you’re down here, but on the surface I can lobby for you to be pardoned for your crimes against our nation and put you in a position of neutrality rather than hostility. Better yet, one of diplomatic immunity.”

Answer or not, Armin felt he was getting through to him by the increase in his respiration rate and the subtle changes in his facial expression. No matter how painful it would be to turn to an enemy who harmed Bertholdt in the past, Armin knew that the offer he was presenting was too good to decline. There was only one barrier left for Bertholdt to cross, and that was to accept that he would have to talk to the enemy. Something not even torture could convince him to do truthfully. If pain didn’t convince him, would the promise of comfort? 

Maybe that was something Armin had to prove if he didn’t get any work done today. 

He went back to taking notes of what he’d just said. He’d remember, but Hange would want to know what he said at the end of this and he wasn’t going to disrespect that request. He hadn’t told anyone about this deal. If Bertholdt agreed, they’d be another person he’d need to convince of the merit of bringing Bertholdt on-board as a diplomat, and the better their standing, the easier this would be.

That was a bridge to cross once he had Bertholdt’s cooperation to prove that his idea could work. For now, though, he had to focus on his target ahead of him. He had no guarantee yet he’d be successful.

Finishing with a few more ideas on what he could say or ask next, Armin closed the notebook and placed it aside on the crate together with his pencil. Bertholdt still had his eyes closed, his breathing once again barely noticeable, and Armin wondered if he’d really gotten enough sleep that night, as Hange had said. He could’ve just as easily fallen asleep again. If he was too tired to stay awake, Armin was just watching a man sleep instead of persuading him to reconsider through a refusal to back down and leave him be. 

“Bertholdt?”

The taller male’s eyes cracked open, a questioning hum escaping from his mouth before rolling his head to face the wall, his arm draped over his eyes.

Oh. Right. No point staying around if he needed to catch up on sleep, Armin figured.

“I know that Hange’s research is putting a lot of strain on you. You should go back to sleep and let your mind rest. But do think about my offer when you wake up again. You wouldn’t want to miss a chance like this and regret it later,” he said as he stood up, picking up his coat again and putting it on. Sitting still for some time cooled down his body temperature significantly and made him aware of how chilly it was down here. Bertholdt’s trembling wasn’t out of the ordinary taking into account the light clothing he wore. 

Armin finished putting his material back inside his backpack and grabbed the lantern before walking through the gate again, looking over one last time at Bertholdt, now awake but not reacting, as per usual.

“We will speak again at a later moment. Maybe in the evening, maybe tomorrow.”

With that, he pulled the gate closed behind him.

“What!? You’re back already? Did something go wrong?”

The other three MPs seated at the table with Hange seemed equally speechless to see Armin return only twenty minutes after he was dropped off. Unlike Hange, who looked astonished, it was legible that the MPs hadn’t exactly expected much different than for him to book no results. It wasn’t them who decided Armin’s permissions, though. He had more important things to worry about than their disapproval of him.

“To the contrary. Everything went as I had hoped it would.”

That left the room silent, the MPs now just as surprised as Hange.

“You got the Colossal to talk, then?” Hange followed up.

Armin shook his head.  “Not yet. But I got him to listen. That’s all I need for now. I’m right on track to make him talk later.”

“Listen?” the smaller of the MPs asked.  “That’s what we get it to do every day. Is this some kind of joke?”

“So you think you have made progress?” Hange immediately followed, not allowing the MP to undermine Armin. It must’ve been a daily occurrence for the Survey Corps and the Military Police to clash like this, but Hange’s authority seemed to override the conflict, so their quick action shut the policeman right up.

“Solid progress.”

That put a smile on Hange’s face.  “Then we continue building on that. What needs to happen next?”

Armin placed down his lantern on their table, opting to remain standing so as not to invite himself into the group.  “I left to let him rest. I don’t think he slept well tonight, he looked tired and was falling asleep while I was still talking to him. I decided to give him time to think, but I want to return again soon. I was hoping to come back either this evening or tomorrow.”

“Does tomorrow work for you? I was just about to leave, that way we don’t have to send someone up with you again this evening and I can hitch a ride on the lift.”

“Tomorrow’s fine with me, Commander. But I’d like to ask you to postpone any tests you may have planned for today. Give Bertholdt some time to recover, tomorrow will be important and I need him awake and lively.”

Hange looked over at the MPs.  “Got that?”

“No tests today,” the taller one replied.  “But you’ll get behind schedule that way. Kid might start demanding things if you give it a day off.”

“I’m sure you’re competent enough to handle that if it happens,” Hange said.  “Give me a moment to finish up here and we’ll return to the surface.”

Armin chose not to sit down while he waited for Hange to finish up, a choice he came to regret after five minutes, when they were still discussing the results of the previous day’s tests. The whole talk could be summarised as ‘same healing rate as always but he started showing convulsions that led the test to its conclusion’, yet, somehow, they managed to stretch it to twenty minutes before finally joining him, at which point Armin’s legs were starting to complain that he was still standing up when there were chairs  _ right there. _

“So, what happened down there?” Hange asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the MPs.

“I talked to him. I gave him reasons to have a conversation. He listened to me and I’m giving him time to consider what I said.”

“Armin, you’re killing me! Still no details?” they responded in an exaggerated tone, putting in no effort to contain their excitement.

A small, nervous smile tugged at the corners of Armin’s mouth.  “I’ll fill you in when it works, or after it fails. It’s a little… embarrassing to tell you with conviction and then book no results. I’d rather wait until I know a little bit more myself, you see?” Those last words trailed off slightly and he hoped that Hange wouldn’t catch onto his bluff. It would be more useful to him if they didn’t know what he was trying to do. 

“Now you’re just teasing me,” they chuckled.  “Your main strategy is to use your prior friendship to get to him, isn’t that correct?”

“It plays a role,” Armin responded, keeping his answer short on purpose.

“Ah, I almost feel bad for him when you finally pull out the rug from under him. Do I have to expect him to become even more of a nuisance once that happens?”

Armin thought for a moment. He may not have to pull out the rug from under him at all, so to speak. If he could avoid it, things would be easier.  “It’s hard to tell ahead of time,” he concluded.  “There is a chance that he will already feel less inclined to cooperate with you, just because I visited. My apologies if that is the case.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Hange responded, waving a hand towards their shoulder.  “It’s not like he isn’t already being difficult with us, what’s the harm in just a little more resistance? Can you believe he still thinks we don’t notice when he keeps quiet about half of the effects he experiences when we test stuff on him?”

Armin wasn’t sure what to answer, so he simply walked on ahead chuckling awkwardly at the anecdote. Hange waved their hands around as they continued, increasing the pace at which they walked.  “Now, I’ve told him multiple times that he needs to speak up if he wants to be sedated. I’m so generous as to take with me all sorts of expensive drugs to take away the pain, but does that mean he’ll tell us when it hurts? No, of course not, because he enjoys that illusion of control over us. Well I ain’t letting him have the pleasure of getting to hear us demand he tell us the full story! It’s his loss if he wants to play games.”

Did everyone play games with each other down here? First the MPs seemed to be locked in a petty struggle for authority they couldn’t win against a Commander, now Armin learned of just how little Bertholdt cooperated even when he agreed to cooperate. 

“How can you tell that’s what he’s doing?” Armin asked. 

“Ah! For that,” Hange’s smile widened into a grin, looking straight ahead like they focused on something very interesting just beyond their nose,  “I don’t need him to tell me that he’s in pain when he can barely hold still and he needs to clamp his jaws shut tight to cope. It’s so transparent, he isn’t fooling anyone with that little façade of his. And it isn’t just his body.”

They looked at Armin, pointing at their glasses.  “It’s all in the eyes, Armin. He can lie all he wants, play that stoic game of upholding a brave image while he lies still and pretends he ain’t shivering, but when I look into those eyes…” Their eye widened, pupil constricted as they stared at Armin intensely and he couldn’t bring himself to look in front of him to watch for bumps in the tunnel.  “… Those can’t lie. When I interrogated him back in September his silence was all the same, but to explain to him what was about to happen and see him turn from defiant to terrified out of his mind in seconds? Oh, that paints a full picture, alright. If you ever find yourself in doubt, just stare deep into those eyes of his. You’ll know everything you need to know.”

Expressive eyes as a window to the soul. When Armin recalled them, those predatory eyes locked onto his own were all that came to mind. Regardless, it was correct that throughout his talk, there was this constant subtle change in his eyes. Half a year prior, those same eyes had looked positively tormented, hiding nothing. If Bertholdt remained quiet, this would be an important factor in estimating the effectiveness of Armin’s words.

“Thank you, I will keep it in mind. I did notice that, but I wasn’t consciously paying attention to it.” He offered Hange a smile, at which theirs only broadened.  “And I was wondering…”

“Yes?” Hange asked when Armin fell quiet. 

“I was wondering about our relation to the policemen down here. They seem… turbulent and angry, more so than usual for a policeman.” That was putting it lightly, but he couldn’t call them jerks in front of his superior, now could he?

“Ah,” Hange mused.  “It’s a interesting story, really. With the Survey Corps on its last leg, we had to outsource security here to the Military Police. I needed all of you to be with me to pick up the pieces of our regiment, so I wasn’t going to post any of you here to waste your time doing what any policeman could easily do. In the public’s eye, the Colossal’s under our control, but according to the paperwork, it falls under the Military Police’s jurisdiction.”

“Huh, really?” Armin asked. If the rest of the 104th knew about this, they hadn’t told him.

Hange’s tone was calm and serious for once.  “Yes. I managed to regain some control through my expertise, so the Military Police and the Survey Corps have joint custody over it, but it’s an administrative nightmare. As a result, I technically have authority over the policemen down here as well, but they don’t care. Their superiors lack the discipline to do much about it unless I talk to them personally. Do I look like I have time for that? It leads to disputes like the one you saw. I have to nip them in the bud early on if I want to avoid them evolving into a conflict. The police are still quite the headache to deal with despite all the changes of the past half year.”

That could’ve been useful to know ahead of time. Before Armin offered Bertholdt deals that he thought he’d only need to convince Hange of. If the Commander of the Military Police entered the picture, he might have a hard time convincing either of the merits of bringing Bertholdt to the surface.

“I see. What does that mean for me? As a matter of knowing what I can and can’t do around here, I mean.”

“Well,” Hange clapped their hands together.  “You’re in that grey area as well, but I told them not to interfere with your process. If there is anything you need them to do or anything you need them to  _ stop _ doing, they’ve been told to follow those instructions. You can report to me whenever they’re difficult with you and I’ll make sure the issue is dealt with swiftly. I won’t allow them to interfere with something this important because they’re in a bad mood.”

What gave him the honour of being protected like this? Hange was putting a lot of trust in someone who had been in the Survey Corps for less than a year, regardless of what had happened since. Did that experience he built up in just a few months really warrant this amount of faith in his skills? If Armin ended up failing, it wouldn’t reflect well on him.

All Armin responded with was a quick thank-you, and the rest of the walk back was spent on small talk and light gossip about the policemen — nothing that was of use to Armin, as far as he could tell. He had to slow down near the end of their walk to the lift structure, so he was so glad to finally sit down on the floor of its cabin, letting his legs and back recover from having to endure more activity than they had in the past weeks combined. He was surprised that his heart hadn’t stopped in his sleep yet, with the shape he was in after months of being bedridden. Gods, did he need exercise.

But what Armin needed  _ now, _ though, was rest. The walk back from the mine was already overdoing it, so when he returned to the living quarters and Hange assigned him a room to occupy for the night, all he could do was collapse on the creaking bed before dozing off. Only after one of the policemen entered to ask him if he wanted to join the rest for lunch did he decide to get up, but he didn’t intend on leaving his room again until he got hungry enough to join for dinner. It was rare for him to skip a meal these days, but he just didn’t feel any appetite at all.

What he counted as  _ getting up _ was really just lying on his back staring at the ceiling, mulling things over. The events of the morning still kept his mind occupied. They invaded his imagination and woke him up more than once when he was resting, and he wasn’t quite sure why, considering everything had gone well. The longer he dwelled on it, the more he regretted having seen that glare. Like the shifter would crawl out of the mine all on his own to strangle Armin at night — irrational absurdities Armin wished he could shrug off, but failed to.

If his mind wasn’t going to offer him rest, he might as well do something he intended to do anyway. Reaching for his backpack, he took out the binder with Bertholdt’s file and the notebook Hange had given him. Armin was glad that he hadn’t stayed around in the mine to do this. The cold and dusty environment would’ve been terrible for him and he’d be passed out for half a day from exhaustion had he only returned in the evening.

He got back under his covers, his pillow placed against the headboard so he could sit upright with the binder on his lap, and the words ‘reading material’ flashed through his mind. There were far more appropriate places to read a morbid file like this, but the hard wooden surface of a chair would only wreck his body more if he had sat down at a desk. Since Shiganshina, he did most activities while lying in bed — be it eating, getting briefed on recent happenings, or just taking time off to relax. It didn’t look like work, but he needed it if he wanted to get through the day. 

“What can you tell me?” he murmured to himself, unaware that he was voicing his thoughts out loud as he flipped open the cover of the thick stack of paper on his lap. It was an old habit of his when he was alone, one that had only increased as he grew older — especially after he was hospitalised. 

Going through the file, he was already familiar with most of the documents at the front. They were allowed insight into Bertholdt’s and Reiner’s files to better determine if Armin’s theory about their true identities was correct. None of these would help him much right now, but it was interesting to compare what the two had claimed was their history to the truth that came to light later. They claimed to be from the same mountain village, which should line up with the internment zone. Armin had considered bringing up the concept of Reiner or going home, but the chances that Paradis would allow him to ever return to Marley even after being granted a full pardon were even more non-existent than him being granted a full pardon at all. The risk of Marley using the Colossal Titan for its military exploits again was too large, and Bertholdt would come to learn quite a few things about Paradis’ military if he cooperated. Information that couldn’t fall into Marley’s hands. He needed to stay on the island.

“Is there anything I lose if I don’t tell you that?” Armin placed his hand on his chin. That lure to go home, the promise that Paradis could assist him with achieving this goal… Couldn’t that form a good way to get the shifter to go along with their plans? If he helped them make peace, he could go home and find his loved ones again. What an alluring promise that would be. Armin had mentioned the topic once today, to elicit an emotional reaction in Bertholdt, and its success only proved the topic was on his mind now more than ever. He opened his notebook and made note of it, muttering a  “yes, that’ll be useful” under his breath.

Armin recognised some of the next pages by his own handwriting, and a flattered panic surged through him at the thought that his jumbled notes were integrated into such an official document. He couldn’t suppress the drawn-out groan that followed as he tilted back his head, covering his eyes as he felt his cheeks heat up. Had he known, he might have put more effort into his chicken scratch so that someone that wasn’t him could actually read them, too. Would what he would write in the notebook these next few weeks be integrated in the file as well? He looked over to his notes from today and needed a moment to tell what he’d written. That was something to put effort into.

He focused himself on the file in front of him again. He could always feel flattered about where his notes went later. Reading back into his and Hange’s handwritten documents, there was a plethora of information to be found. Notes on Bertholdt and Reiner’s behaviour during their training days. Notes on their fighting styles. Notes on their intelligence. Notes on the Colossal Titan as observed atop Wall Rose. Notes on their relation to Annie.

“What do you know about Annie?” Armin mumbled, his question lost in the silence of the building.

Did Bertholdt know about Annie’s crystallisation in the first place? If he were to take Armin’s word for it, she was suffering the same fate that he was, and Armin wasn’t sure if Hange had offered him the comfort of answering his pleas to know if she was okay. After all, Bertholdt now was well-aware that Paradis wouldn’t shy away from torturing the enemy if it needed to do so, so why would they spare her? To add to that, he was so easily fazed by Armin’s comments on her torture that he couldn’t help but wonder if he was aware of her ability to crystallise herself in the first place. Did he still question if they really had Annie? That they were hurting her? Was he still of the opinion that they could feed her to the pigs, for all he cared?

“No way. Why don’t you tell me?” With the current information void they kept Bertholdt in, a mutual exchange of knowledge could be a strong strategy to learn more about his opponent. Armin could only hope that no one had divulged Annie’s fate to Bertholdt, or that they contradicted themselves to the point of confusion. Every fresh bit of info could help.

Armin went through the notes carefully, penning down any thoughts and ideas that came to mind. Things he could ask Bertholdt. Topics to bring up. Ways to break his silence and compel him into saying at least something. He managed to fill a couple of pages before he reached the segment of the file that detailed the Battle for Shiganshina, printed rather than handwritten, and from quickly rifling through it in the morning he remembered it was a wordy report. 

While he could extract some useful information from there, Bertholdt knew about as much about the battle as Armin did considering how soon after Armin lost consciousness, Bertholdt ‘died’. If he had to read the report now, he’d be done long after sundown and likely wouldn’t have the right mindset left to read the documents detailing his incarceration afterwards. Between the two, the latter sounded far more relevant. 

As much as it hurt not to get to scratch that four-month-old itch of getting to know what exactly went down that day, it was better to skip it for now and come back to it tomorrow. If by tomorrow, he hadn’t convinced Bertholdt, was what he told himself, but he knew that curiosity wouldn’t allow him to leave the report unread when Hange had given it to him so freely.

A bit annoyed at himself, he turned bundles of pages until he found himself at the part he was looking for: the interrogation logs detailing Bertholdt’s first weeks down in the mines. He took a brief moment to breathe in and out before getting into the gritty details. 

Unlike the file that was delivered to him in the prior week, these documents were far more thorough and detailed. The exact start and end time of each session. The duration of breaks. Bertholdt’s mental state before, throughout, and after the sessions. The intended questions and what they led to. The projected and actual methods — sometimes written with so much detail that Armin found himself nauseous. Transcripts of what Hange and Bertholdt had said to each other. Further speculation on what certain things he said meant, what they could lead into, or how they could use this information. It wasn’t complete, but it was much more useful than anything Armin had read before. Each account was so much more detailed that it helped him shape a picture of Bertholdt’s psyche as he spent longer down in the mines. 

Hange carried out most of the work, leaving very strict instructions for the MPs when they finally ran out of energy and needed to leave things into their hands so that they could rest. Anyone else could mess with their process. Armin could relate to wanting control over what he was doing. They had used brutal techniques from the start, without bothering to pry any answers out of him. Had Armin not overheard Hange interrogate once before, it would puzzle him why they’d chosen to do that, but the motive was clear. Hundreds of good scouts died in a second, including one of immense value to Hange. On top of the losses of the first Wall breach and the attack on Trost, it wasn’t hard to imagine why those first hours down in the mines looked the way they did. 

The rest of the first and second day showed the payoff: dead silence, despite the earlier abundant promises to speak. Nothing they did could get him to open up anymore. It was apparent what had happened, but to think that he actually changed his mind on being willing to talk and was prepared to endure such pain based solely on spite? Armin wasn’t sure if even he could go to such lengths. 

“So pain does nothing for you,” he mumbled to himself. Maybe it was for the better that Armin was dissuaded from using cruelty. These were the things that gave him exceptional insight into how Bertholdt’s brain worked, so Armin wrote down his thoughts in great detail, writing and then underlining ‘Discomfort and pain will  _ NOT _ work’ at the top of his current page.  “… But how would you respond to the opposite?” followed immediately after. What would the offer of comfort and the promise to alleviate his suffering do to break his reluctance? Or could he offer small comforts and use those to win his trust?

Continuing, the desperation was almost tangible when there was a sudden shift from torture to refusing Bertholdt food and keeping him awake whenever he risked falling asleep. Bertholdt’s status during these five days was noted down as confused, mistrusting, delirious, and always anticipating something else on top of what they were doing to him. After a good day or so spent in these conditions, barraged with constant questioning that was designed to tire his mind, signs of disorientation set in. On the second day he finally broke his silence to ask for food, and shortly after he became receptive to Hange’s more casual conversations in an attempt to confuse him into giving them relevant details.

With a total of five days before they let him rest again, the logs were over a hundred pages long thanks to the constant conversations they forced him to have, and most of it was cryptic nonsense. Here and there, Armin could recognise some familiar bits where he could guess what Bertholdt was trying to say, and they showed just how disoriented he had become. Most showed that he wasn’t sure if he still was undercover or not, with him referring to his days in the 104th and the Survey Corps. He said some things about their betrayal, most of which sounded apologetic and regretful in nature, but he remained aware that he was talking to the enemy and not Reiner or one of his allies and kept important details to himself. 

Those hundred pages showed why it wasn’t working: these were obviously the ramblings of someone who desperately wanted to go back to sleep and get something to eat, no matter what it would take him. He seemed disheartened that when he told Hange that he didn’t know the answer to their questions, the response was that he wouldn’t be fed. At that point, Armin would’ve suspected him to say about anything just to get his basic needs fulfilled, yet he was just as closed on the fourth day as he was on the second. His confusion may have forced him to let his guard down, but it also made him entirely unreliable. 

Why they continued this for five entire days was a mystery. It was such a huge waste of their time, especially since Hange had places to be and a hard set deadline for when they had to leave again. Maybe the fact that he was constantly talking blinded them to the fact that nothing he said could be trusted, not because he was lying but because he himself likely lost the ability to tell the difference between reality and delusions anymore. After that, a sunk cost fallacy might’ve kept them going — he might just give the answer  _ any moment _ now, and why waste three days of hard work when the answer lies just ahead of them?

There was one last day before Hange ran out of time and had to leave for the capital again to carry out their task as the Survey Corps’ new Commander in times of uncertainty. If this information weren’t this pivotal, they wouldn’t have been able to set aside the time to come down to the mines. The desperation was already tangible in the last days of sleep deprivation where they occasionally strangled or punched him to motivate him to stay awake and answer, but that last day, those final 7 hours after they let him sleep and then went back to work and neither Bertholdt nor Hange got any rest… It wasn’t a mystery why those finally broke Bertholdt. 

When he agreed to answer their questions was when things got worse. He dropped all defiance, showed the will to cooperate, and yet they kept going —  _ had _ to keep going — under the presumption that what he said was all self-preservation when there wasn’t enough certainty that he was speaking the truth. They had proof of that: he contradicted much of what was written in the journals, chose to lie. Still chose to repeat his strategy.

By the end, Hange had run out of time and had to stop their efforts, not trusting the policemen to continue their work for them. Some notes discussing what they learned followed, clearly written after the fact, but they were limited in length, capping off that section of the report. 

Armin closed the folder and the notebook, deeming that to be enough new information to mull over. He sat in silence for a few more minutes, setting things straight and double-checking his recent notes. A loud bang on the wall startled Armin, and when he heard enthusiastic yelling and laughter outside like there wasn’t a pane of glass separating him from the people outside his window, a wave of self-consciousness washed over him to think anyone who passed by could hear him rambling to himself. 

Placing the folder and the notebook on his nightstand, Armin then arched his back as he stretched his arms above his head. He must’ve spent hours combing through that file, but it was still too light out to be evening. It was for the better. He had a lot to think about, things he might forget certain details about if he were interrupted by dinner.

He stood up, walking towards the window to look outside, the group of trees a dozen meters removed from the building instantly catching his eyes. Running one hand over the windowsill, his eyes trailed over to the snow – freshly disturbed, multiple sets of footprints spaced out far enough to indicate that people were running around the building’s perimeter, and a larger disturbed patch showed exactly where one of them crashed into the building earlier. Maybe they lost their footing, maybe someone pushed them. They sounded like they were having an awful lot of fun for being on the job. As if the Survey Corps wouldn’t be the same if there were enough of them left to be stationed for months as guards at a post no one ever attacked.

A weary sigh escaped Armin, but his melancholy quickly evolved into a sad smile. Where were the days where they all wasted time like this? Those freezing cold winter days where they could barely even walk because of how much snow had fallen that night, yet the usual suspects always found the time and energy despite being overworked to turn it into a game and start a war. Armin usually spectated, but he wasn’t immune to lure of fun when they all turned on him in an effort to drag him into their game and he was forced to retaliate. If his recovery went well, he might one day be able to plunge his hands into snow again without suffering a negative impact on his health.

Come to think, whenever he was standing back to avoid those snowball fights or whatever else the cadets were up to, Bertholdt was usually in the vicinity doing the exact same thing, but the taller male was harder to entice into joining in. Sometimes they’d have a laugh together about how rowdy their friends could be as they walked on before they could be dragged into it. Before he could continue that thought, Armin prohibited himself from thinking about it any further. Unless he wanted to evoke a sense of nostalgia in the shifter, it wouldn’t work. 

He leaned his hips against the windowsill, turning far enough so that he could comfortably peer outside, latching onto something to banish the memories from his mind. Three MPs came dashing into sight again a story below – a man and a woman chasing another man, snowballs hitting him in the back as the two seemed to have turned to a pact against their friend. The one pursued tumbled into the snow as his friends mercilessly pelted him, then managed to get up again and flee while his friends were reloading.

The woman’s eyes suddenly fell onto Armin, and she stopped gathering snow. Her ally soon stopped too, and before long their other friend came walking back, asking what’s the matter before he caught sight of Armin as well. Armin couldn’t help but sheepishly smile down at them as they nervously looked to each other.

“Hey! Don’t tell on us! Please?” one of the policemen yelled at the top of his lungs. Armin found it almost comedic how the volume of his voice was enough to tip someone off. He brought his hand to his mouth, making a turning gesture with his fingers before tossing the imaginary key away. 

“Thank you!” the other policeman yelled back, sticking up his thumbs. The policewoman thanked him with a waving salute, and their victim already resumed dashing off as soon as he was off the hook. Now they owed Armin a favour. Might come in handy in the long run.

Armin pressed his forehead against the cold glass to get a better view of who exactly it was that owed him a favour through the slightly foggy window, placing an arm above his head for support. As they made off, Armin noted just how young the three were — if their behaviour weren’t an indicator of that yet. Not men and a woman, but boys and a girl, possibly new recruits from the previous batch of graduating cadets. 

It was so easy to see them running around in the snow like regular teenagers and forget what they were here to do. Which of these amused faces he just saw had been present in the dark, asked to record as they listened to cries of anguish and desperate pleading in an attempt to distinguish anything of value to note down? The same way the 104th had been present that day when they were overthrowing the government, hidden in a cellar and barely older than the policemen who worked at Tourze. Which of them were chosen to witness what went down there to make sure it was all documented at the cost of their night’s rest? Armin could only hope that the older policemen were utilised for this grim task, but he couldn’t imagine anyone would be very comfortable with such a task regardless of age.

Not to mention the victim. If any of those young policemen were sent to the mines during those initial nine days, they would’ve witnessed the torture of someone their own age. Someone Armin’s age. These days, with how rough around the edges he looked with his long hair and his unwashed skin, it was so easy to forget he was just 16– no, 17 since a few weeks ago, just about as old as most policemen stationed at the mines. What did it do to those who had witnessed a relatively young human being in so much distress, treated like a beast and not a man? What did that do to one’s faith in the system, even if they agreed with what they were witnessing? 

But would any sane person be able to witness this and still agree with the practice, or would it fracture them just as much as it did its victim?

The nausea from earlier returned. What had happened was so incredibly brutal — exactly as he’d expected it would be, yet it still unsettled him to read the details and know this isn’t just a story, but something that actually happened to a real person who was once close to him. The thought had occurred to Armin when he was reading the file, but he had suppressed it in favour of getting through the whole thing in one piece. Now that he’s had time to breathe, he could only think of how it was all so irresponsible, to say the least. These were in no way justifiable methods of trying to obtain information. It was barbaric, unfitting for their society’s advancement. If the shifter was going to give them useful information, he would’ve done so on the first day. To push it beyond that wasn’t just unprofessionally crude, but the chances that he’d cooperate with them and give them valuable information decreased with every day they continued. 

None of this should’ve happened. There were far more effective methods than blindly inflicting pain and making that pain worse when it yielded no results. He brought a hand up to his face, resting one side against his palm as he rubbed his temple. To think that if Armin had been there and not in the hospital, things wouldn’t have needed to become so bloody. He could’ve made a change, but he didn’t. All because he got wounded, he cost Paradis a valuable asset. What a disappointment. 

Not to mention that he could’ve made things better for Bertholdt, too. None of the remaining 104th members  _ wanted _ him to be tortured. Even after everything that he had done, there were still some remnants of their camaraderie that made them feel disgusted to think about what could be happening to someone they’d once considered a friend. But all of them also knew that they had missed their window of opportunity for humane treatment, that it was a necessary evil to extract information from the only person who could offer it to them, so no one ended up talking about it given the difficult moral debate of whether what was happening was really the right course of action. Armin had his suspicions that several of his friends were against it but didn’t speak up because they knew they had no valid arguments that weighed against Paradis’ survival. He couldn’t imagine that either Sasha or Connie much agreed with it, either.

Even at times, especially during those moments where Armin’s infected skin sent fire through his veins and he was comforted by the thought that he wasn’t the only one suffering after the battle, he still couldn’t bring himself to be completely comfortable knowing that Bertholdt was treated this way. There were moments where he had to banish the thought from his head, justify why this was happening and why they were driven into this corner. Ultimately, it was all down to Bertholdt’s own choice, and all Paradis could do was work with what he was giving them.

“Why didn’t you give us a choice?” he whispered, hot breath condensating against the glass. He shifted in position, turning his back on the window when the policemen came around for a third time and Armin decided he wasn’t in the right mindset anymore to watch a couple of teens play in the snow.

There was no doubt about how powerless they were. The lives of one million innocents far outweighed the integrity of one person who would never even scar. That didn’t mean that the treatment he received wasn’t sadistic and undeserved, though. But at what point does that assertion become false? What if this was about three people? One hundred? One thousand? One million people they had to slash through, each life they destroyed representative of one they saved on Paradis? What if they needed to sacrifice more people than were on their island? Was the scale really relevant to determine how acceptable their actions were?

Armin could sympathise with Bertholdt. Had it been up to Armin, it wouldn’t have gotten to this point. He wouldn’t have dragged the shifter onto a table and cut away at him for hours before even considering asking a single question. He would’ve opted to check how willing he was to talk now that he was defeated, neutralised, and no longer obligated to fight for his life. It wouldn’t exactly be a leisurely talk over a cup of tea, but he’d get the chance to talk in a no risk environment. Maybe he could get him to explain exactly why he wouldn’t talk. 

The scenario was so clear inside his head. With all the time in the world to question him, pry into every part of a mind that was not yet fractured by the disdain that torture brought about, he could do so many great things. To plant the seeds of just enough terror about what could happen if he didn’t cooperate with Armin — with Hange hovering menacingly behind him waiting for their turn, the contrast alone could entice Bertholdt into giving up information to the one who wasn’t tentatively waving around a pair of blacksmith tongs. If all went well, Armin might even keep relations between the island and their only outside source intact.

But if he needed to, if he could verify that it increased his chances to get answers, he knew very well that he’d be capable of turning himself into the exact same monster Hange had. If necessary, he could even plunge the blade himself. His gut felt cold to think back about the time Mikasa slashed deep into Bertholdt only seconds after it was confirmed that he and Reiner were traitors. If she was capable of such violence when it was needed of her, then so should Armin. 

Of course he would resort to trying to break his psyche over his body first, but if that truly didn’t work, he wouldn’t be afraid to inflict pain as a means to an end that was this important. He suspected low doses would work far better than to hurt him to the point where he couldn’t talk anymore and would use it appropriately as a support to his interrogation, not as its main driving force. He had such a clear idea of all the ways he could be useful in this investigation, that he was annoyed he hadn’t been present from the beginning.

Armin could never fault Hange for doing what they thought would work when he was no different. It was still pain. It was still cruel. He had to keep his sight exactly on which parts of his humanity he was ready to reject to get results.

Everything he had read was already in the past. Nothing could be changed about it anymore. There was no point in lamenting what he couldn’t prevent when he could still change the course of the future.

He was surprised to find himself invigorated, his confidence renewed thinking about how useful this all was for him right now. How he’d read exactly what he’d hoped to read in these logs. They’d been so brutal with him, tried to shatter him to the point where he was barely even coherent anymore, and pushed even beyond that. And he couldn’t suppress a smile at the thought of what that treatment implied.

Hange and the MPs had made themselves such a dangerous enemy to the shifter that if someone — anyone at all — came in with kindness and respect, he might just trust them a little easier. Maybe not on his first visit, but he definitely would eventually. Given the choice to spend time with his tormentors or with someone who showed him respect, would he really reject Armin out of spite even if he knew he was being manipulated?

It was hard to tell. Spite and disdain were definitely strong motivators, strong enough to cause Bertholdt to choose his worst option when it gave him the chance to defy those who had wronged him. The Bertholdt Armin used to know would never resort to such a toxic mindset, but the events of the past half year made Armin question whether he ever knew the real Bertholdt. His silence only proved that whoever he had been before everything happened was gone. Armin only had one choice, and that was to work with the Bertholdt who existed now.

One afternoon left him with dozens of pages of notes scribbled down to consider when he returned to the mine later. Tomorrow, but Armin was pretty sure he wouldn’t just book results in two days. He could count himself lucky if he got the shifter on-board within a week. It wouldn’t be easy, but he wasn’t opposed to a challenge like this. It gave him something to do in the month where he wasn’t allowed to pick up his more intensive training yet.

Looking behind him, the sky had a hint of darkness in it. Dusk would come around soon. He’d been isolated long enough, and it showed when a dizzying daze ran through his head as he stood up again, forcing him to hold onto the windowsill so as not to fall. Armin had been focused the whole afternoon, and only now did he notice his hunger. After all that, after he was done thinking it through, he wanted nothing more than to distract his mind from what he’d just read. If he wanted any sleep tonight, he’d need to get his mind off of it for a while.

Tomorrow would be an important day. Many of his future results would depend on the second contact, so he had to let his thoughts simmer and distract himself from overthinking it all. Yet as he went about the rest of his evening — when he found the policemen far more amicable up on the surface than they were down in the mine — he couldn’t help but feel a haunting presence weighing on his mind, like there was always something right around the corner there to get him but he just couldn’t perceive what it was.

He wondered how long he could pretend this was nothing to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 136 was particularly unpleasant and disappointing after 135’s high so I decided to finish chapter 3 of my fic to cope ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> If you’ve looked at the series his work belongs to, you know that I intend to write some supplementary stuff for this verse, and something about their training days dynamic is in the works! I’ll add it to the series when it’s done and it’s not necessary to read for this fic, but it can give some context for stuff that happens later.
> 
> I don’t really know if I’m doing a good job at all so far, so I’d appreciate any type of feedback! Even a quick “you good dw” would help me estimate if I’m on the right track. Honestly, anything I get is valuable at this moment! 
> 
> Come follow me on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/AruBerus), where I sometimes talk about this fic, usually referred to as just 🐍. I'm also drawing some stuff for each chapter, you can find the one for this chapter [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/post/639916575931170817/who-we-are-today-chapter-3-contact-a) and all of them [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/tagged/hand-project/chrono). That second link will definitely have spoilers as more chapters show up.
> 
> As usual, thanks to my beta readers [Gwenyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenyn_bright) and [T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intonerthree). Give ‘em a visit and read their fics!


	4. Dissonance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More to be said and heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written during NaNoWriMo.  
>  **  
>   
>   
> **

When Armin found himself once more standing in front of the wooden gate to Bertholdt’s makeshift cell, it was with a slouch in his posture and eyelids that were heavier than was ideal. The accompanying policeman looked equally as drained as Armin was to be out and about this early, if his slumped back and messy hair were anything to go off of. Or maybe he was just hopelessly unskilled in giving himself haircuts, leaving it uneven on all sides. With only the flame of a lantern to shine a light on his features, it was hard to tell. The policeman hung up his lantern and dug for his key, leaving Armin to stand behind him and wait, a bit dazed.

If it were up to Armin, he’d still be lying in bed right now and leave this meeting for the afternoon. He’d had a horrible night of tossing and turning tangled up in bed sheets that simultaneously felt too heavy and too light. Somewhere in the second half of the night, he’d accepted that he wasn’t going to get much rest and had resorted to watching the snow fall outside his window instead. His mind was still buzzing with the events of the day, something he’d already noticed when he spent the rest of the evening around Hange and the other on-site surface policemen before retreating to his quarters late in the evening to begin his fruitless attempts at getting some sleep.

But he wanted to create regularity in his visits to the mines. A discernible pattern. To be on schedule, so that Bertholdt knew exactly when he was coming. It would work best to create a foundation of trust between the two of them instead of making Bertholdt feel like Armin could barge in to pester him at any given moment. When Armin had been woken up from his half-conscious drowse with a curt knock on his door, he’d briefly considered ignoring the world around him before he begrudgingly dragged himself out of bed. He’d then prepared for the day at his own pace, gone through his morning routine without too much haste behind it, joined the others for breakfast but kept to himself — the policemen and Hange alike had left him be when they saw the dark bags that without a doubt adorned his eyes — and finally spent some time in the supply room. As he’d left the building for his descent, he halted in his tracks and made a detour to his room to pick up one last item. He’d left behind the heavy folder in his room this time but still left for the depths with a full backpack.

“How long are you gonna be in there this time? Ten minutes?” the policeman asked him as he battled with his bad aim to insert his key into the only closed one sealing the middle of the gate.

“It depends on his mood. It might be ten minutes, it might be thirty, or it might be a couple of hours. We’ll see.”

Armin didn’t receive an answer as the policeman finally lined up his key with the keyhole, and with a turn of his wrist and a hard pull, the gate was opened in front of him. The policeman gestured inside and Armin shone his lantern ahead of him first, seeing Bertholdt lying against that same wall once more, this time folded over on his side with the top of his head and the ends of his legs nearly pressed against it. It sent a shiver through Armin's spine to walk inside once again, to see that the shifter made his stance clear from the start this time. 

Today wouldn’t be the day. Disappointing but expected.

The policeman lingered by the gate with his arms crossed as Armin placed his backpack and his coat down on the crate opposite to Bertholdt. When Armin sat down, he shot a questioning glance the policeman’s way. “Could I please talk to him alone?”

The policeman loosely pointed at the crate. “You should hang up your lantern. Get it out of the Colossal’s reach in case things go wrong.”

Armin nodded, taking a hold of the lantern and standing up. The policemen turned around and left through the corridor again. As soon as he was gone, Armin sat down and set down the lantern on the crate again, turning his attention to Bertholdt. The shifter’s breathing was steady but superficial, unlike the slow deep breathing that characterised his sleep. With no windows to the soul to observe, it was all Armin could go off of, and upon closer inspection, he noticed that Bertholdt’s breathing was slightly strained, more costal than it was abdominal.

“Good morning, Bertholdt,” Armin greeted, and this time he didn’t leave any awkward pauses between his sentences, knowing that it was highly unlikely he’d get any type of response today. “I hope you got more sleep tonight than you did yesterday. These aren’t exactly the types of conversations I’d want to listen to while I was tired either.” The irony of that statement didn’t escape him.

Armin reached for his backpack, placing it in front of him to start undoing the straps. “I wish I got to greet you when I entered, but I didn’t want the policeman to hear it. They all sound petty enough to use something as innocent as a greeting to pester you in the long run. I didn’t want to add to the list of things that they might use against you.”

Paying the shifter no mind, he flipped open the backpack’s now loose flap. “Either way, before I left to come see you, I spent some time in the supply room to get you something,” he said as he slid both hands inside, pulling a rolled-up sleeping bag out of it and looking over to Bertholdt to check if he’d turned his head yet. Still ignoring him, as he’d expected, but there was a slight dip of his head towards the cave wall. 

Armin placed the sleeping bag on his lap, fingers tapping on the leather. He carefully considered his next words, but decided to go through with them. 

“I know you turned 17 a few weeks back. I figured that giving you something late is better than never.” 

It was subtle, but it was there. The slightest shift towards more shallow breaths, Bertholdt’s chest rising more than his abdomen compared to earlier. Armin didn’t hesitate to continue. “When I was down here yesterday, half an hour of sitting still was enough to make me shiver, and that was with a sweater and a coat on top of my regular clothes to protect me. It’s disconcerting to see they are making you sleep in these conditions on a cold, hard floor with just a shirt and shorts on. I raided the supplies to search for a sleeping bag you could use.” He demonstratively tapped his fingers onto the leather again. “I know it’s still not ideal, but it’s the best I can offer you right now. If you’re careful with the way you use it, you shouldn’t track too much dirt inside it and you can keep it clean.”

He placed the sleeping bag next to him on the crate, patting it a few times so that Bertholdt could hear proof behind his words. A faint smile appeared on Armin's face. “You know, I spent about ten minutes looking for differently sized ones, I didn’t want to give you one that’s too small, before I realised that wouldn’t be necessary.”

Bertholdt's next few breaths were all quick, drawn fully with his thorax, neck tensed as he turned his face towards the ground just a little more than it already was. 

Armin slightly cringed at himself for the remark. On second thought, maybe they weren’t on the basis where Armin could make leisurely small talk about Bertholdt’s living conditions yet. Just because it was meant to sound like small talk to Bertholdt didn’t mean Armin could approach it as simple small talk. He’d need to be more careful considering his words. Yesterday’s misstep still hung in the back of his mind as a huge mistake on his part, and he still couldn’t subdue that small voice that told him he already blew it and he might as well give up. He didn’t want to repeat that today. 

“… I’m sorry, that was inappropriate to comment on,” he quickly apologised, voice dipping as he spoke those words. A longer drawn-out breath, a sigh Bertholdt wanted to deny was a sigh. 

Armin didn’t linger on it too much, moving on after that first exhale. “I initially thought a sleeping bag would suffice to help keep you a bit warmer and more comfortable, but then I got thinking: would _I_ want to spend the whole day confined in a sleeping bag? It may be warm, but it’s probably not enough, and it’s not exactly comfortable to be forced to lie down in it for weeks on end if you want to avoid being cold. So I went to retrieve this too.”

Reaching into his backpack again, he fished out his now dry wool blanket, neatly folded up earlier that morning. Placing it down on his lap, he looked over to Bertholdt to see if his curiosity had compelled him to turn his head yet, but he remained turned away. 

Armin folded his hands over the blanket, its fabric pleasant on his hands now that they had started to cool down in the mine’s frigid air.

“I searched the supplies for a decent blanket, but all I could find were flimsy bed linens that wouldn’t keep anyone very warm. They wouldn’t like it if I dragged a bedsheet in here and it would be a hassle to wrap around yourself with one arm. Luckily, I travelled here with a blanket over my shoulders, so I decided to just give you that one instead. It kept me warm even when I got snowed on on my way here, so I think it’ll keep you warm in these dry temperatures just fine.”

Armin moved a hand up to scratch the scarring under his chin — a bad habit from back when his wounds still used to itch that he should probably get rid of again as soon as he could.

He considered his next words before putting his hand down in his lap again. “I… do want to ask you to be careful with it. I bought it four years ago, during that harsh winter where us refugees were sent to work out in the fields. It cost me a lot of money back then, and it’s kept me warm for so many years while remaining unscathed. It would be nice if you kept it intact. Okay?”

Not that he expected a response, so he softly repeated an “Okay…” to himself after a very brief wait. “I’m leaving both here on the crate. You can come pick them up when I’ve left again later. I’ll instruct the police to let you hold onto these, too, so you won’t have to worry they’ll be confiscated. If they do, I’ll confront them and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Armin wasn’t sure if he had the authority to harass the policemen into letting Bertholdt keep his belongings, but it was worth trying. Sure, he could tell them that these objects were part of his process, but would they listen despite Hange's reassurance the day before? If nothing else, the promise could prove to put Bertholdt at ease. 

The shifter remained lying on his side, and Armin couldn’t help but wonder what he thought of these gifts of comfort. If he’d see through his intentions straight away or if he’d appreciate them. It was unlikely that he would trust Armin just like that, but he wondered if he would decline their usage altogether out of spite and wariness. It was something to take note of the next day.

Armin was quiet for a few minutes, taking out his notebook and a pencil in the meantime. He’d already done most of what he came here to do today, but that didn’t mean he’d just leave it at supplying some basic comforts. He’d already ruled out what he had learned the afternoon before as a viable topic to talk about during this session, but that left him with a difficult task: repetition of his offer to the point where it didn’t annoy Bertholdt, without seeming transparently shallow about just giving him these basic comforts as a means to convince him to cooperate.

If he were honest with himself, it wasn’t just for leverage’s sake that he brought along these items. Had they not been useful in winning Bertholdt’s trust, he might’ve still brought them down here. The Military Police barely took care of their prisoner, he’d expected that much, but it was repulsive to see how bad their neglect truly was in person. It had taken Armin until long after he’d left to understand why he felt so uncomfortable with it all. At the very least, Bertholdt should be treated with some decency.

But if they had done that, none of the things Armin was doing right now would have had as strong an effect as they did now. He had to count his blessings and make use of the situation at hand.

“I wanted to talk about my proposition again,” he changed the topic, more for his own sake than for Bertholdt’s. “You weren’t fully awake when I did so yesterday, so I left. The policemen thought you’d slept well, but I wouldn’t trust them to correctly assess whether you were dead or alive.”

Armin flipped open his notebook again, taking a quick glance at his notes from his first visit out of force of habit. He still had a good idea of exactly what he had and hadn’t said.

“Of course, my offer still stands. I’m not sure if I should read your silence as a consideration or as a decline of it, but it doesn’t matter. The offer remains open regardless. I still wish to grant you a position as a diplomat up on the surface. Working on the surface means _living_ on the surface, and it also means mediating a difficult conflict.”

He wasn’t sure why he was now leaving short pauses in the hopes he’d get anything in return. In the brief moment of silence, he took note of how Bertholdt’s breathing had steadied again. Back to deep but shallower-than-usual breaths drawn by the lower half of his torso, the most relaxed they had been during the entirety of Armin’s visit.

If he was at ease, now was the best time to help him find his peace. “I realised yesterday after I had left that I wasn’t very clear on some of the details I gave you. I just told you there could be peace if you were to offer us your assistance, but I never got around to explaining exactly what I wanted from you and how that could contribute to lives being saved.”

If he wanted results, he’d need to be transparent. He’d long considered exactly what he could say, what he should keep to himself, and what he could lie about, but anything he kept hidden from Bertholdt he would eventually find out if he agreed. That could drive him to rescind his help or start scheming against them instead. 

“The Survey Corps,” Armin started, “was left in shambles after the battle of Shiganshina. Out of the two hundred scouts that joined the survey, only nine returned. Those of us who came back have taken on a role as elite scouts. Although I haven’t gotten a lot of work done in the past months when I was recovering, I’ve been working on getting up to date with everything that’s been going on in my absence, and us survivors have taken on a far more important administrative role among the scouts’ ranks than we had prior. This means that we have leverage. That _I_ have leverage.”

Softly, he started fiddling with the fabric of the blanket still resting on his lap, the worn-down but still soft texture apparent even through his bandages. “I’m no longer titan fodder who can’t make any changes. We have been asked to attend several meetings to discuss the future of Paradis, including the decision on whether or not to share the knowledge of Doctor Yeager’s journals with the public. I was in a coma, so I didn’t attend, but I would’ve if I were conscious at the time. But that’s beside the point.”

Armin looked away from Bertholdt, letting his eyes wander to the ground before locking onto a small spider crawling over the floor, coming to a halt not far away from his boots. A slight shiver ran across his spine and feet to think of all the creepy crawlies that could be found in this mine, possibly even behind him or on the crate he was seated on. 

He moved his legs back only slightly, wanting to deter the critter from feeling too enticed to crawl up his leg, before he shifted his attention back to the conversation — the _monologue_ — at hand.

“Because you were in the Survey Corps’ regiment when you deserted, disciplinary measures should’ve been left in our hands. However, with our dwindling numbers, the Military Police was the regiment that ended up with custody over you. It’s why you never see any Survey Corps around here.” 

Would things have been any different if it had been them guarding Bertholdt? The implications of the thought quickly deterred Armin from thinking any further on in.

“Still, with the Survey Corps having the most knowledge about your titan powers, Commander Hange Zoë was brought on-board to decide how you would be detained with an eye on safety. With their expertise on interrogation and their insight in your file, they ended up staying. As such, you already are under partial custody of the Survey Corps by a technical detail.”

The spider started crawling again, away from Armin and towards Bertholdt. Part of him wondered if Bertholdt sometimes resorted to picking what crawled around this mine to fill his deficits, and he wasn’t sure where the thought came from. Might be the way lying on his side exaggerated Bertholdt’s shoulder, ribs, and hip poking out of his skin.

Maybe he should bring something to eat along with him next time he visited.

“It’s exploitable. Especially if you make a list of conditions to follow in exchange for your cooperation. You can include the demand for them to hand you over to us. That way, I’m in a position where I have a good amount of jurisdiction over you and I can use that to help you. I can make sure that, legally, Paradis is obliged to follow your demands, and you won’t fall into the hands of a regiment as corrupt as the Military Police. You won’t have to worry that you’ll be stabbed in the back after lending us your help, because the conditions will last until the end of your life or until you agree to amending them, which is all on your own terms.” 

Armin folded his hands over the blanket, looking back up at Bertholdt, whose breathing had become awfully careful again. Slow, but not like it would be during his deep breaths. Rather, he was delaying inhaling and exhaling after each very careful breath. “That’s how I can assure you that we will keep our part of the deal. It will become my job to ensure you remain protected, and as my authority grows in the regiment, I may be able to eventually negotiate a pardon for you. After cooperating with us, it is not unrealistic that such a request would be considered by the higher-ups. If you prove yourself beneficial to Paradis and unwilling to kill more of us, you might even be exonerated and you’ll spend your final years outside of a prison.”

Bertholdt didn’t need to talk for Armin to know exactly what he was thinking of. He needed to finish this whole talk strong.

“… It’s likely you’ll even get to go back home. Back to Marley. To see Reiner again, to reunite with your family and friends there. Exoneration means Paradis can no longer restrict your movements, so you can finally go back.”

The expected deeper breath before he returned to normal. Armin had planted the seed, now it was just a matter of waiting until his influence bloomed.

In most cases, it was better to be honest. In this case, he couldn’t afford to. The topic of going home had been far too important to Bertholdt, so much so that he would kill old friends to do it. Armin would be idiotic not to home in on it. He had to use it. Tell him an auspicious story now, assure him that his exoneration was realistic, lead him by that promise. Let it fade over the months. When the time was there, tell him he'd done everything he could but that Paradis’ leadership just wouldn’t budge. That he miscalculated. _That he was sorry._

It wasn’t that Armin wanted to prevent Bertholdt from seeing his loved ones again, but he needed Bertholdt to learn certain things about Paradis if he was going to cooperate. Bertholdt’s possession of more knowledge about Paradis wouldn’t help Marley only if Bertholdt remained incarcerated with no way to convey all this intel to the mainland, so he couldn’t return under any circumstances. The only factor at play here was to think about how this knowledge could contribute to his cooperation in the long run — if Armin was giving him anything to use against the island, if what he told him would help Marley even if he couldn’t contact the nation. He was well-aware that Bertholdt could very well lie about helping them but work against them behind the scenes.

All the more of a reason for Armin to learn to read and understand the shifter’s body language.

Armin wasn’t sure how much the revelation that he’d be unable to return home would hurt the shifter, but it would hurt less than the untimely death of a million people, be they from Paradis or from Marley. In the long run, Bertholdt might even agree with the decision. Maybe he’d understand that sending the cataclysmic weapon his body housed back to a military state Paradis was at war with was out of the question, that it was never personal, and he wasn’t going to ask in the first place. It didn’t need to be all bad.

To let it sink in, Armin waited a slight bit before continuing again. His eyes found their way to that spider again, now nestled between the ground and Bertholdt’s back, just barely visible under his shirt. Vision now adjusted to the scarcely-lit cavern, the back of his shirt showed similar flecking with blood that, as he noted, could be found on the front. He jotted down something about how the absence of violence under the control of the Survey Corps could serve as another draw he absolutely would have to stress.

Believing he’d given Bertholdt enough time to think, Armin decided to resume.

“Once you have accepted, you will most likely be taken to a hearing where you’ll be asked to answer questions the upper brass has for you. If the terms of your cooperation include your right to refuse any questions that you believe will lead to Paradis’ military action over diplomatic action, you are exempt from answering those. Since your and the Survey Corps’ goal to achieve peace through negotiation align, we will back you up on this. This way, you can inform us about Marley’s modern-day attitude and what we can bring to the table to talk to them. All without being forced to divulge… for example, military bases and information on troops.”

He stopped fidgeting with his pencil, moving one hand over to the lantern he’d put down next to his leg when lifting it earlier — a little too close for comfort — and moving it away a bit, leaving his hand to rest on the metal handle to thumb at that instead. In his head, he followed the steps he had planned out in his explanation to their next point: response.

“Our big advantage here is that we can communicate with you. Any strategy we devise to approach Marley based on the information you give us, we can pass by you. You’re the only person on Paradis with any expertise in what Marley would and would not be responsive to. It is this service that makes me believe that you are the key to a conflict without bloodshed.”

His hand’s grip on the lantern tightened, slightly nervous about the impact of what he wanted to talk about. “There’s no one else who can do this. You’re the only person with a link to Marley, with _experience_ living there. Without you, we need to go to war blind, and with what we know, that means we’ll have to kill. Soldiers and civilians alike.” 

Armin softly sighed, his eyes looking down into his lap instead. “You’re just one person, but you could become our most valuable asset. With how exclusive your information is, you can make so many demands and we’d have to give in to them if it means we get your cooperation. With that amount of power… “ He tapped his pencil in his left hand down on the notebook a few times, knuckles almost white from his grip on the lantern in his right. 

“… Well, they don’t want me to reveal this information to you, but right now, we are pretty much at your mercy. You’re not our prisoner… We are _yours.”_

Armin looked up again and carefully observed for any movement that was out of the ordinary, watched as Bertholdt’s chest gently rose and fell with the subtlest shudder under each breath, as the occasional shiver shook his body before he went artificially still again, the muscles of his shoulders shifting ever so slightly to hint that he held his arm coiled, perhaps close against his body. 

No reaction. No response. Nothing. Armin’s hand dug into the wool of the blanket, unsure why this projected apathy was frustrating him once more. A one-sided conversation cost him far more energy than a regular one would, and his fatigue was catching up to him, making him moodier than he should be at Bertholdt’s taciturn defiance.

He felt the urge to leave but decided against it. Finish his story now, redirect his frustrations later, when he wasn’t in hearing range anymore. Not that it’d come to anger, but he’d been discouraged yet again.

“About those conditions I keep mentioning,” he continued after leaving a moment of silence for Bertholdt to process his last words, “those might not be entirely clear to you either. They’re not something we negotiate during your hearing. They’ll be a document we compose together way ahead of time, where we go over everything you demand. This is where things like your living conditions go. Getting a bed, getting enough food, being treated like a person by the ones who take care of you and by the nation, things like that.” 

Bertholdt’s breathing stilled momentarily, and Armin’s voice reactively went a degree lower in volume as he unclenched his grip on the blanket and the lantern and retracted his other hand back to his lap, happy with a tangible response at last. “We can go into great detail on it, and as I said before, once you have given us the signal that you want to talk to us, the upper brass will be prepared to listen to what you ask for. Of course, some things like your absolute freedom or the removal of your safety gear, you won’t get right away, but being so close to finally having an enemy who’s prepared to speak, Paradis’ safety concerns them far more than getting offended because you asked for an extra meal. They’ll just approve anything that’s about your quality of life, they get no value out of subjecting you to subhuman conditions like these MPs do. They just want answers.”

A long and noiseless sigh through his nose as he pressed all the air out of his lungs, then a few deep inhales. Anxious taps of Armin’s fingers over the blanket, hardly audible over the mine’s natural low rumbling sounds, the thumping of his heartbeat caught in his ears. He wanted a verbal reaction so bad despite knowing it wouldn’t happen today. Something to break up this difficult monologue. Armin found himself mirroring Bertholdt’s silent sigh.

“I think that details my proposal to be more coherent and clear-cut than I managed to do yesterday. It’s hard to know if I’m making myself clear when you don’t give me feedback, Bertholdt. If you have any questions or anything is ambiguous and you want to know more, you can ask me now. I’ll gladly answer anything you need to know to make a decision. If there’s any uncertainty at all that is keeping you from accepting this offer, you’ll prefer asking me for clarification over declining based on an unknown.”

Silence. Armin was done playing this game for today. He’d already started clasping his backpack’s straps closed again during his explanation, opting to carry his notebook by hand after he’d placed his blanket on the sleeping bag sitting next to him on the crate. He stood up and put on his coat again. “That’s, again, a lot of information to drop onto your shoulders all at once. How does an hour to sort out your thoughts sound?” 

More silence as Armin hung up the lantern, offering the shifter the luxury of sight while he left him time to think. He’d pick up the lantern the policeman left hanging outside the gate to find his way back to the main area. “Or you can tell me now, if you’ve already made up your mind and you want to accept. Or, I guess, if you want to decline. That’s fine too. That way I won’t waste your time and you won’t waste mine, and I don’t have to come back to bother you in an hour.”

He looked over to Bertholdt, still, and Armin wondered for a moment if he was breathing at all. Staying down in the mines and coming back to this cell later would be fruitless, it took Armin only one look at the lifeless shifter to understand that. He wanted to rescind his offer and just retreat to his quarters for some rest so badly, but he couldn’t just take it back after already offering it. He turned on his heel, mind flooded with doubt as he walked out the gate.

“You shouldn’t trust me.”

Small and hoarse, monotone, barely audible as the shaky hum caught in his throat, but Armin had definitely heard. He stopped dead in his tracks, his heartbeat pulsing through his spine, and the potential of this renewed hope washed over him, pulling him out of his fatigued daze and filling him to the brim with energy. 

This one-way conversation just became a proper conversation. No matter what it was Bertholdt said now, it was infinitely better than nothing. Armin turned his head, body soon following, to find the shifter still in his spot, head bowed towards the wall slightly further.

“What?” Armin asked in return, the bewildered thrill of his high voice starkly contrasted against Bertholdt’s low one. He came a step closer before halting again, not wanting to move too close too fast. 

Bertholdt very carefully bowed his head further until his forehead made contact with the wall, the movement more visible through the gradual strain of his neck against his shirt collar than through his head obscured by a bony shoulder. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. Or he’d gone silent again. Armin would have to adjust to this quickly if he wanted to—

“You can’t trust me, Armin.” His deep voice made it hard to tell whether he was speaking or whispering, the words coming out just as softly as they did the first time. The muscles of his back strained harder, legs pulled closer to the wall and chin now making contact with his chest, leaving his voice muffled and even harder to understand. But Armin trained his ears, intent on hearing every single word Bertholdt mumbled.

“You can’t trust me to choose what’s best for Paradis if there’s any chance it will negatively impact Marley.”

What was Armin’s whole explanation for, if not to illustrate that Bertholdt didn’t need to lie to protect Marley? That he could choose what to say? That ultimately, he didn’t have the power to betray Paradis again the way he had once before? Armin opened his mouth to speak, to bring an instant retort to his worries, sucking in frigid air to start arguing his points in great detail, but Bertholdt beat him to speaking.

“If your plan relies on trust… it will fail. I _have_ to betray you again if you give me the chance. I don’t have a choice. You don’t want that.” He paused, voice now shaky and insecure, barely anything more than a shuddering whisper, and Armin could just about make out the words, “I don’t want that.”

A numb silence fell over Bertholdt, hunching his shoulders in a tense movement as his tied hand covered his face, breathing happening in sharp shocks rather than a continuous flow. 

The excitement still flowed through Armin’s veins, threatening to make him blurt out the first thing that came to mind several times, but now more than ever he needed to thoroughly think about the impact of every single word that fell off his tongue, calculate the effect that every syllable, every letter would have on the shifter now that he finally spoke up.

This was information he could work with. He wasn’t backed into a corner anymore, and he finally had something to use to his advantage. This was good. This was perfect. He had practically won already, if he could just use this to its fullest extent.

In the back of his mind, the ghost of an old question lit up, one he couldn’t let go of in so long.

“Is that… because you made that decision? Or because Marley did?”

Silence. No change in posture, shoulders still tensed, breathing slowly starting to settle back into its same old steady rhythm as Armin had observed over the past fifteen minutes but now entirely perpetuated by his chest. Maybe it was enough to answer his question. He’d long wondered how much of this Bertholdt really wanted and how much was Marley, and he couldn’t believe that much of his choice had ever been his own.

Another step forward, as light on his feet as he could muster. 

“Bertholdt?”

Silence. He waited a few seconds, hoping to get an answer, anything to show him that Bertholdt hadn’t just shut down again entirely, but a pit formed in his stomach and Armin feared that it was all over again.

“Bertholdt, I’ve explained it to you, haven’t I? Marley has no more control over you here. They don’t even know you’re here, they might just assume that we have killed you. No one will harm you or any of your family for your decision to help us, it’s all up to you right now. You don’t have to worry about any of this. And even if you did… Anything you tell us will benefit Marley as well. How is peace bad for the Marleyan Eldians? How is that a betrayal to any nation?”

He couldn’t stop the barrage of words from spilling out of his mouth until he’d said it all, a bit dumbfounded at himself and at the disjointed waterfall of arguments and pleas. He composed himself, straightening his back and shifting his notebook so that he now held it in both hands. 

“If you have any doubts, we can go over them. I’ll know exactly if you have any reason to fear or if it’s something that can be solved, Bertholdt. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Another small step closer, but a jolt through Bertholdt’s body made him recoil. “If it turns out you really can’t help us, you really have no choice but to betray us, I won’t drag you out of these mines and force you. I have no reason to waste time here if it turns out to be pointless. But we don’t know if it’s pointless yet! How can you possibly know that when you still know so little?”

Silence. Armin’s grip on his notebook tightened, and his voice grew just a degree more desperate. 

“Okay, I… Let’s start at the basics. Why do you think that anything you do is automatically going to lead to you betraying us?”

Silence.

“Because… Because there are ways. There are so many ways for us — for _you_ — to solve this conflict without shedding any blood, Bertholdt. The military is willing to listen. The only reason they weren’t prepared to do so before was because Hange confirmed to them that you weren’t budging and you wouldn’t give them information. But we’re willing to listen if you are willing to speak. Even if it’s barely anything you’re saying, we’re prepared to listen. If needed, you can tell us only Marley’s demands so that we at least understand more about what it expects of us. But anything you say will lead to a higher chance that we can make peace.”

Silence. He was scrambling for arguments here, and he was well-aware of it. This wasn’t working. He needed to try something else, something a little more drastic.

“Don’t you want there to be peace?”

Silence, but a small shiver ran across his back at the confrontational nature of his jab. The pause hung heavy between them, and the fear that he might be right suddenly struck Armin. He waited just a short bit before softening his voice as much as he was capable of, tone tinged with genuine disappointment.

“… Is that the issue, Bertholdt? You don’t believe that peace is the right option? You really do think that we are all children of the devil, after all?”

He’d considered the option before. That the Bertholdt they’d known for three years was a façade, a lie, someone he had constructed and presented to them all this time, but that that kindness was all just a tactic to fit in with them better, to avoid suspicion. To evoke sympathy when he was confronted and begged them for understanding. To get them to maybe spare him in a next battle, to hesitate just long enough for him to cut them down in their indecision. That the confrontational, cold, careless Bertholdt that Armin had encountered in that decisive battle in Shiganshina was the real Bertholdt, that everything else was just there because it benefitted him.

He didn’t want to give any credibility to these thoughts, reasoning that it would be too hard to keep up such a misleading façade for so long and show such competence in his deception, and yet book no results in their secret mission to find Eren. They’d spent a lot of time together where Armin discovered the deeper characteristics of the shifter, and to think that he was just pretending all this time seemed impossible.

Now, he wasn’t so sure, and he had betted everything on it not being true. It could be enough to discourage him from trying again, because this heartless Bertholdt would under no circumstances want to cooperate with him. 

If Bertholdt were any different from this image of him that suddenly haunted Armin, he’d speak up.

“Tell me that I’m wrong, Bertholdt,” he pleaded. “Is what I said true?”

One of the perks of standing only a couple of paces away from him — compared to the view of his back he got from over at the crate — was the ability to see Bertholdt’s face. So when he reluctantly, tentatively nodded his head, Armin could see every detail of his expression; the way his eyes were squeezed shut, how his face scrunched up as he finished the gesture, the trembling of the muscles over his cheekbones and around his mouth.

Armin’s heart sank. He watched with wide eyes, looked down on Bertholdt as the shifter struggled to keep his breathing as neutral as he could, but the shivering and occasional shock of his torso gave him away. Was that really what he’d thought the whole time? That they were evil and they didn’t deserve peace? 

Or was he lying?

Armin narrowed his eyes, reminding himself to think before ever feeling. What good would lying do Bertholdt?

For one, it’d get Armin to leave him alone.

That made a lot of sense, come to think of it. Say and do anything to get Armin to leave — decline his offer with his lack of communication, tell him that he would inevitably betray them without ever specifying how, even going as far as claiming that he truly was some sort of killer who happily wanted them all dead, who believed them to be devils, when back in Shiganshina he had taken the time to explain to him the opposite, how he fully believed that those he was about to kill at least should get to hear that that they were not devils, that they had done no wrong. 

That was definitely a version of Bertholdt that Armin had come to know. The one who’d demean himself, ruin his image in the eyes of the only person on the island who saw him as a person just to get him to leave again for good when he was making things difficult for Bertholdt. 

Maybe he should. Maybe everyone was right, maybe this was indeed a bad idea from the start. Why had he fooled himself into thinking he could get someone so dedicated to his cause that he didn’t budge even as he was being tortured to be cooperative when he was offered a softer alternative? 

This whole mission was doomed from the start. Maybe he really should give it up and go back to the surface for good. 

“I see,” Armin answered after an uncomfortably long pause. Aware of how he was almost crushing the notebook under his fingertips, he let everything relax, from his strained fingers to his lifted shoulders to the tension that ran through his back muscles and legs. He looked upon the side of the shifter’s face again, his expression unwavering, and wondered what he would see in his eyes had they been open right now. 

Maybe they would tell him what he was supposed to do, what would bring him closer to understanding the shifter enough to know what would make him yield.

He shouldn’t stay around today. He could always come back at a later moment, but right now, he was far too tired and overwhelmed to think about how to tackle this tricky situation and bring it to a good end nonetheless. He might mess things up beyond repair if he went in without giving his next course of action a long think. 

The consideration to leave without saying a word crossed his mind, but he knew he’d only do it for the emotional satisfaction of it, to hell with the bridges he burnt if he did it. Something inside him was _so_ tempted to let his emotions guide him out of these mines. He couldn’t allow himself to listen to it. It was giving up and running away. Since when did he run away?

“I don’t think we’re getting far if I continue to talk to you under these circumstances, then, Bertholdt,” he calmly informed the shifter. He turned his back on him again, now more aware than ever that he could get attacked if he let down his guard, and walked towards the gate again. 

“It’s better if I return another day. How about tomorrow, same time?”

He could almost feel the shifter seethe at the knowledge that his plan to get rid of Armin had failed. It came across to Armin as a very small victory, and he felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He looked over his shoulder a final time, seeing no movement, no nods or shaking of his head, and decided that he was satisfied with that.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, turns out Bertholdt does know how to speak! This is without a doubt one of my favourite chapters so far, and will likely remain one for quite some time.
> 
> My upload schedule is about to change quite a bit since my 4-month internship has started, I’m running out of chapters I wrote during NaNoWriMo, and chapter 137 was so terrible that it made me want to disengage from SnK so that when its ending crash lands, I won’t be too invested to be sad about the wasted potential. I still plan on finishing this fic since I still have passion for it, but canon has been so horrendous that I can’t force myself to care much. Ain’t that why I’m writing my own canon?
> 
> It’s funny, really. Not a week after I accepted that I may still be an Armin fan, that it’s just post-timeskip Armin I hate, THAT is when Isayama decides to release a chapter that makes me want to wring all the life out of him. I thought the Armin I was redeeming with this fic was already a case of his own, but I’m not even sure if I could redeem current canon Armin. No matter, that’s not the Armin I’m writing, so we good 👌 Lad’s definitely falling on his ass a few times for the piece of work he would grow into, that’s for sure.
> 
> Come follow me on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/AruBerus), where I sometimes talk about this fic, usually referred to as just 🐍. These days I complain a lot about canon, so it may be a bit overwhelming. Be warned. I'm also drawing some stuff for each chapter, you can find the one for this chapter [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/post/643798237312073728/who-we-are-today-chapter-4-dissonance-more-to) and all of them [here](https://big-trouble-in-little-eldia.tumblr.com/tagged/hand-project/chrono). That second link will definitely have spoilers as more chapters show up.
> 
> My beta readers [Gwenyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenyn_bright) and [T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intonerthree) did a great job again helping me comb the errors out of this chapter. Give ‘em a visit and go read their fics! They have great Berumin, Beruani, and Pokopiku content, among others.


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